(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography
By Aaron Bearden
After each NASCAR Cup Series race, Motorsports Beat will share a piece breaking down the stories and takeaways from the weekend. This is a report on the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 from Martinsville Speedway.
NASCAR Cup Series
Who Won?
Martin Truex Jr. The 2017 Cup champ continued his recent trend of short track success with a late surge, soaring past Denny Hamlin in the final 20 laps and driving off to his second win of the 2021 season.
Top Stories
A streak of success continues, a streak of parity ends
Leave it to short track racing’s latest dominator to end the streak of new winners to open the 2021season.
Fresh off of an off week for Easter, Martin Truex Jr. and crew chief James Small played the race and strategy to perfection at Martinsville Speedway. Truex won for the third time in his past four starts at the facility, scoring his fifth short track win in the past 11 races on small ovals.
It was another strong run for a driver once considered an afterthought, particularly on smaller ovals. Prior to the stretch Truex had never won on a short track, leaving his critics to wonder if he’d ever manage the feat.
Now they’re perhaps his greatest strength.
Truex will get a chance to keep the good times rolling next weekend at Richmond Raceway – another short track where he’ll enter with two wins in the prior three races much like he had at Martinsville.
If he pulls off a win there he’ll have three wins before anyone else even reaches two.
The 2021 Cup season has been led by a storyline of parity thus far. Kicked off by a surprise Daytona 500 triumph from Michael McDowell and a breakout performance by Christopher Bell on the Daytona International Speedway road course, the Cup field’s first seven weeks were each filled with different winners, locking up almost half of the potential playoff grid and yielding questions over whether this may be the year that there are 16 unique regular season race winners.
It’s difficult to foresee any year where 16 drivers win in 26 races, but it’s rarely looked more possible than this one. Eight races into the year, both points leader Denny Hamlin and defending champion Chase Elliott have yet to win a race. Two-time champion Kyle Busch is winless with them, as are eight-time 2020 winner Kevin Harvick and 2020 Championship 4 participant Brad Keselowski.
Of course, Truex would like to squelch those thoughts with a run of dominance akin to 2017. After a quiet 2020 season, the New Jersey native feels like his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team might be up to the task in 2021.
“I feel really good about our team (and) what we can do this year,” Truex said. “Our cars are strong. Our team is strong. We’ve been together a long time.
“Obviously last year James was the new piece moving to crew chief, but, man, he’s done a great job.
“We have a great opportunity to win a lot of races,” he later continued. “Hopefully we can take advantage of it this year more than we did last year.”
Is consistency enough?
In perhaps the best season of his lengthy Cup Series career, Denny Hamlin won seven times but only saw the points lead for three of 36 races in 2020.
Through eight races of the 2021 season, Hamlin has flipped that script entirely. He’s yet to win a race, but has led the point standings for seven consecutive weeks with a string of top-fives and massive stage point advantage.
That consistency has been great for the Virginian. His seven top-fives thus far are more than double the total of all other Cup drivers with the exception of Kyle Larson, who has four. In the pre-2004 points system he would already be one of the locks to contend for a title.
But does it matter in this points system? With seven winners already on the board and gaining playoff points on Hamlin, are the 15 playoff points awarded the the regular season championship enough for Hamlin to rest his laurels on without a victory?
The answer is a tricky one.
“We definitely would like to have more (playoff points), for sure,” Hamlin said. “But the way we’re running, we can win any given week. We’ve just gotten beat by one or two cars each and every week that have just hit the setup a little bit better than we did.
“But it is, like you said, hard to complain. I don’t know what the record is for most points scored in eight races, but I think we pretty much got to be there (laughter). We don’t finish any worse than third in every stage, obviously we’re finishing in the top three or four every race.”
Hamlin isn’t lying about his point advantage. Despite only being eight races into the season, he already sits more than a race above second-place Truex with a 76-point edge. The 40-year-old has led laps in all but one race and been a factor at the end of at least half of them.
Such was the case on Sunday, when Hamlin led a race-high 276 laps out of 500 and was seemingly poised to give the Cup season its eighth-different winner in as many races. But Hamlin’s car had a weakness – it struggled on longer runs.
A lengthy run to the checkered flag was all it took to knock Hamlin out of contention at the end. He surrendered the lead to Truex on Lap 285, dropped behind Chase Elliott a few laps later and ultimately rode home in third.
Another strong run? Sure.
A missed opportunity? Absolutely.
“Unfortunately, it was just too many laps there at the end that we couldn’t hold those guys off,” Hamlin said. “(We) at least gave ourselves a chance by getting a good restart there and getting in front of Martin.
“Ultimately they were running better, turning the corner, getting off than we were.
“Came up short again.”
If he keeps putting himself in contention, logic would dictate that wins will come. But at least early on Hamlin’s tale has proven to be one of consistency over victories. Should that continue to the playoffs, he could be the litmus test for just how much winning matters in modern NASCAR.
A good run hosed
Before Truex’s late rise to victory lane, it seemed like Ryan Blaney would be the one leading the charge and becoming the first repeat winner of 2021.
One pit road mistake threw that opportunity away.
Strengthened by an impressive No. 12 Ford on long runs, Blaney shot out to an early lead and paced 157 out of Sunday’s 500 laps – the most he’s ever led at Martinsville. The middle section of the race failed to play to his strength with a smattering of cautions, but a lengthy green-flag run in the final 100 laps allowed Blaney to shine and close in on Hamlin for the lead.
A caution on Lap 453 sent Blaney to pit road in second place, positioned to contend for a win with a fast stop. But the service was slow and he ran over the air hose while leaving his pit stall, eliciting a penalty that sent Blaney to the back of the pack for the ensuing restart.
The Team Penske star mounted a spirited comeback when the green flag waved, but ran out of time to make meaningful progress. He ended the day in 11th, lacking a result that showcased the pace his Ford had.
“It’s just a mistake and something that should be avoided,” Blaney said of the pit road error. “We’ve had an issue the last three times we’ve been here with a car to win, so that’s frustrating, but I’m real proud of the effort. I just wish we could close one out.”
Blaney was kept out of the win column on Sunday, but recent history shows he might be a factor again when the Cup Series returns to Martinsville this fall. Blaney finished second in both of the 2020 races at the .526-mile oval and was running second again before Sunday’s error.
Notes
- Chase Elliott made a late charge to the front, but fell short of matching last Fall’s Martinsville win that proved key to his eventual championship. Unlike in that race, he never led and had to claw his way to the front. “We had a long day with strategy not going our way, restart lane choice at times was tough,” he said. “I’m glad we were able to get back in the fight there and give ourselves a chance.”
- Stewart-Haas Racing’s woes continued overall on Sunday, though luck admittedly played a role. Kevin Harvick made the most of a quiet day to snag ninth at race’s end. Aric Almirola and Chase Briscoe each flirted with the top-10 at stages, but Almirola faded to 20th with damage and Briscoe suffered a flat tire amid a day where he once fell two laps down and was apparently flipped off for an entire lap.
- Numerous contenders fell by the wayside during the middle stages of Sunday’s race when contact between Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher resulted in a twin spin and a pileup on the backstretch. Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski and Daniel Suarez were among the drivers lost to it, with Suarez throwing his water bottle at William Byron after contact from Byron sent him back into the pack and put him at risk.
- Corey LaJoie was credited with a last-place run at Martinsville, but beforehand he was a legitimate contender. LaJoie had risen into a battle for 10th before contact on pit road under a caution ripped the nose off of his car and damaged his radiator.
- The biggest rivalry on the day may have been between teammates. Rick Ware Racing drivers James Davison and Cody Ware found themselves at odds on Sunday, with Ware turning Davison at least once and the two drivers trading barbs to their crews over the radio throughout the day.
- Teammate troubles aside, Davison did score a career-best result with his 22nd-place finish at the end of the day. Fellow Rick Ware Racing driver Josh Bilicki also scored his best result to date one spot behind Davison in 23rd.
- William Byron continues to be a contender this year. The fourth-year Hendrick Motorsports driver tallied his second top-five and sixth top-10 in eight races on Sunday. He only had four top-fives and 14 top-10s in all of 2020.
- Also continuing to excel is Christopher Bell, whose fourth top-10 in eight races has him more than halfway to matching the seven he managed in his rookie year.
- If you miss the old wreck-heavy Martinsville races, Sunday was the race for you. The race’s 15 cautions were the most for a Martinsville Cup event since the fall race in 2015, which had 18 yellows en route to Jeff Gordon’s final NASCAR triumph.
Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 Results
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Chase Elliott
- Denny Hamlin
- William Byron
- Kyle Larson
- Joey Logano
- Christopher Bell
- Tyler Reddick
- Kevin Harvick
- Kyle Busch
- Ryan Blaney
- Matt DiBenedetto
- Chris Buescher
- Austin Dillon
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Bubba Wallace
- Ross Chastain
- Cole Custer
- Ryan Newman
- Aric Almirola
- Kurt Busch
- James Davison
- Josh Bilicki
- Quin Houff
- JJ Yeley
- Anthony Alfredo
- Chase Briscoe
- Cody Ware
- BJ McLeod
- Erik Jones
- Michael McDowell
- Daniel Suarez
- Brad Keselowski
- Alex Bowman
- Justin Haley
- Ryan Preece
- Corey LaJoie
Stage 1
- Ryan Blaney
- Denny Hamlin
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Chase Elliott
- Kyle Larson
- William Byron
- Alex Bowman
- Brad Keselowski
- Joey Logano
- Christopher Bell
Stage 2
- Ryan Blaney
- Denny Hamlin
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Chase Elliott
- Alex Bowman
- Brad Keselowski
- William Byron
- Tyler Reddick
- Kyle Busch
- Kurt Busch
