Motorsport News

All Eyes on the Paperclip

2024 Cup Martinsville I pack racing VII - Ty Gibbs, No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (Credit: NKP)

In the 17 years I’ve had the pleasure of writing a column in this special little corner of the motorsports universe, I’ve lost count of the time I’ve written some variation of “there’s nothing that ails NASCAR that a trip to Martinsville Speedway can’t fix” ahead of a weekend visit to the oldest, smallest and slowest track in NASCAR.

This week, I’m not sure I feel quite the same way.

Throughout the decades, Martinsville has been synonymous with stock car excellence — the sort of race you can’t take your eyes off, where every corner, every lap, every pit stop mattered. As the cars, drivers, sponsors — and just about everything else in the world changed — the little old Paperclip, the .526-mile track, the site of NASCAR’s sixth race ever all the way back in 1949 — a race won by Red Byron, taking home a princely $1,500 just for the record — kept on delivering.

Not quite so much in the Next Gen era, sadly, a problem that extends across all of the short tracks. So what can we expect this weekend ahead of the all important final cut off race?

Simple truth is: who the heck knows?

This week will mark the fifth-straight year Martinsville has played host to the penultimate race of the season. On the previous four occasions, the eventual season champion has won the fall race twice: Chase Elliott in 2020 and Ryan Blaney last year. Alex Bowman, who was already eliminated from the playoffs by that point, won in 2021, while Christopher Bell was victorious in 2022 and went on to finish third among the four protagonists the following week at Phoenix Raceway.

But despite the issues with this Next Gen era car at short tracks, what we have seen is a better fall race versus the spring one. Using an albeit unscientific method, The Athletic‘s Jeff Gluck’s Good Race/Bad Race poll, we see the following:

2022:
Spring: 18.7% – William Byron (the fourth-worst result recorded)
Fall: 78.9% – Christopher Bell*
*Note: this was Ross Chastain‘s infamous Hail Melon race

2023:
Spring: 37% – Kyle Larson
Fall: 79.1% – Ryan Blaney

2024
Spring: 31.9% – William Byron

Despite a small sample size, we can reasonably expect a better race the second time around in 2024, not least with six drivers vying for those all important two final title berths.

One huge factor might just be the new Goodyear left-side tire compound.

“The option tire that we ran at both North Wilkesboro [Speedway] and Richmond [Raceway] has…

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