Editor’s Note: Before Friday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway – a race in which NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. will compete in his lone national series start of the year – we look back at Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s iconic 2014 Cup Series victory at the historic track.
The scene
It was the first year of NASCAR’s elimination-style format, and drivers still were getting accustomed to the strategies and nuances of the 16-driver postseason. Title favorites Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Jeff Gordon were still in the playoffs as the series moved to Martinsville to open the Round of 8. Upstart Joey Logano joined the three title favorites in advancing from the Round of 12, along with Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and the plucky Ryan Newman. Others, like regular-season points stalwarts Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., had been eliminated following the Round of 12.
Harvick was widely considered the championship favorite, as he and crew chief Rodney Childers — both in their first year together at Stewart-Haas Racing — were in the midst of a season for the ages. Jeff Gordon looked like the Jeff Gordon of old, and Keselowski and Logano gave Team Penske a powerful 1-2 punch.
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The action
Gordon controlled the first half of the race among the playoff contenders, leading 105 circuits in the first 250 laps despite qualifying 15th. One of the best racers in the garage on the unique .526-mile layout, it appeared to be Gordon’s race to lose early as he battled with non-playoff driver Jamie McMurray at the front of the pack.
Harvick, meanwhile, struggled at a venue that hadn’t been kind to him over the years. Keselowski, a strong short-track racer, had an issue with fewer than 100 laps to go and was caught up in a calamitous wreck that sent his mangled car to the garage.
With those two titans out of the picture, a final late-race wreck stacked the field back up for a restart and set the stage for a magical ending. Tony Stewart led a small group of drivers to stay out on old tires, with Earnhardt Jr. and Gordon behind them as the first drivers with fresh rubber.
In a five-lap sprint to the finish, Junior bumped his way to the front and moved past Tony Stewart, and Gordon followed suit.
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The winner
The final three laps consisted of Gordon chasing down his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, but not quite being able to catch him. Dale Jr. won his first Martinsville race and earned his first grandfather clock, capping a four-win season that was his best in years.
“When we won there, just … I had been trying to get that win for so long,” Earnhardt Jr. would say years later. “And everybody wants a clock. … It’s a hard race to win. It’s an easy track to have the best car and get beat.”
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The impact
Dale Jr. would go on to win three more times in his Cup Series career, but this was one he cites to this day as his most memorable. Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick exited Martinsville well below the cutoff line and needing a win over the next two races to qualify for Miami. That led to a gutsy, risky move from Keselowski the next week at Texas that ensnared Gordon in a wreck, sending the drivers and pit crews into a fistfight on pit road.
Kevin Harvick would rally to win at Phoenix and go on to win the title, while Ryan Newman bumped Gordon by a single position at Phoenix to qualify for the championship race — the same one position Gordon was short at Martinsville.
Junior, meanwhile, would retire from full-time driving following the end of the 2017 season. He’s annually competed in one Xfinity Series race since, notching three top-five finishes in those four starts.