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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — The familiar, time-worn traditions of Martinsville Speedway are reassurances. The grandfather clock to the race winner. The hot dogs as an enduring race track delicacy. The ultra-tight hard lefts at the end of a pair of long, highway-striped straightaways.
But there’s another less-tangible custom that’s been around for as long as the track has been cut into the Virginia foothills — a docket of dominators that make up the list of Martinsville favorites.
Jimmie Johnson is on the list. A resume with eight Martinsville victories will put your name on the list in permanent ink.
Denny Hamlin? Easily on the list. Five Martinsville wins, a home-state advantage and a knack for figuring out the short track’s quirks undo those velvet ropes.
Jeff Gordon gets the lifetime achievement award on the list. Still in semi-retirement, the four-time NASCAR premier series champion has nine clock trophies from a career’s worth of Martinsville mastery.
This select register of repeat winners will try to uphold their seeming monopoly on the .526-mile track’s Victory Lane in Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 (1 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM), the seventh of 10 races in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs. The 500-lapper is the opening race of the Chase’s Round of 8, the final three-race phase to determine the championship-eligible quartet vying for the title in the Nov. 20 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
In the case of Chase contenders Johnson and Hamlin, keeping their list status sacrosanct on Sunday would translate to a clear gateway to a championship bid next month. But there’s another six Chase-eligible drivers and a multitude of non-Chasers eager to shore up their own applications for membership in the exclusive club.
Count Hamlin among those hoping that — like grandfather clocks and hot dogs — some traditions remain.
“You really just never see surprises here,” Hamlin said. “You never look back at a Martinsville victory, not one I can think of and say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that guy won.’ It’s usually the same old faces and the guys that have good experience and a lot of experience here.”
For whatever reason, the decades-old speedway has historically smiled on recurrences. Throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s, NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Fred Lorenzen each had their windows of dominance. That begat Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip’s reigns here in the ’70s and ’80s, which overlapped with Dale Earnhardt’s and Rusty Wallace’s rise in the ’80s and ’90s. Gordon, Johnson and Hamlin each followed those footsteps to build their own Martinsville legacies.
The current trio of list-toppers have prevailed here in cars that span multiple body styles, with and without rear wings and splitters and before “reduced-downforce aero package” ever became a part of NASCAR’s technical lexicon. Change in the sport often comes in waves, but Martinsville’s old-school characteristics remain constants.
“There is just a certain rhythm to this place, and it’s still Martinsville even though we have different generations of cars and aero balances on the cars,” Johnson said. “It’s still slow in the corner, which mechanical grip is key. When you hit on something here it usually lasts a long time because it’s a track that requires mechanical grip and not aero grip.”
Several highly decorated drivers are still searching to unlock Martinsville’s secrets to at least get their names on the list in pencil, chalk or dry-erase. Chase contender Matt Kenseth is 0-for-33 at Martinsville over the course of his career. Fellow Chaser Carl Edwards is 0-for-24. Kyle Busch finally broke through this spring on his 22nd try, but has work still to do to achieve a level of stature on the list of Martinsville dominators.
Among Chasers, Joey Logano (0-for-15) is on similar footing. He’ll start on the front row Sunday for the fifth straight time at Martinsville, alongside Coors Light Pole winner Martin Truex Jr. (0-for-21).
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There’s a privilege to membership on Martinsville’s list, which typically starts with a figurative light bulb appearing over a driver’s head. Johnson remembers his a-ha moment distinctly, going a lap down to leader Tony Stewart here early in his career before discovering the rhythm needed to artfully navigate Martinsville’s confines.
For the Chase-worthy drivers who have yet to scratch the win column, Sunday — with the postseason stakes elevated — would be an opportune time for their own awakening.
“This track is one of those tracks where once you kind of figure it out and what it is, it seems that just continues every time you’re here,” Logano said, “and that’s why I think you see a lot of people here with so many wins. There are so many drivers that have a ton of wins here at this race track because once you get it, you get it. I don’t think the track changes much where you’re looking for something completely different, so we’re just trying to hone in on what that is and we’ve made steady progress at that.”