Hendrick a heavyweight, but who has a puncher's chance at Martinsville mastery?
Martinsville Speedway drips with tradition. It's easy to find anywhere around the half-mile oval, which was cut into the Virginia foothills shortly after track founder Clay Earles first bought the original 30-acre cornfield plot just south of downtown in the mid-1940s. It's in the long straights and maddeningly tight corners that have tripped up drivers from the pioneer years all the way to today's modern era. It's on the menu, which serves up hot dogs with all the fixings as it has done for generations, all at the relative bargain price of two bucks. It's also on the list of NASCAR Cup Series winners, which for decades has largely fancied one team that's gathered up multiples of another Martinsville tradition -- a grandfather clock that's stood as the track's trophy since Fred Lorenzen captured the first in 1964. Hendrick Motorsports -- rightfully -- carries a favorite's role into Sunday's Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Martinsville. A rinse-and-repeat type of performance would mean Hendrick's 30th Cup Series victory here, which would add to its all-time record of most wins by one team at any track. All four of the organization's drivers -- Alex Bowman, William Byron, Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson -- have unlocked Martinsville wins, and all four are poised to secure at least top-10 finishes in Racing Insights' full-field projection and analysis. MORE: Cup standings | Full 2025 schedule While Hendrick Motorsports has taken five of the last nine races at Martinsville, there's enough laurels to go around for select Cup Series outfits eager to break up the top Chevrolet team's stronghold. In no rough order, here are three other teams with degrees of opportunity to get their own Martinsville timepiece in Victory Lane. Team Penske: No team has spent more time up front this season, and Joey Logano (247), Austin Cindric (159) and Ryan Blaney (148) rank 1-2-3 in the Cup Series standings in laps led. Through the first six races, there's just one top-five finish among those three. Blaney is Martinsville's most recent winner, with a peerless playoff performance that marked his second victory in the last three races. He's seeking a turnaround after a dismal streak of three straight DNFs, and an average finish of 3.4 in the last five Martinsville races signals some positives. Logano also has plusses on his side here, with 11 consecutive top-10 Martinsville finishes -- the longest active streak by a driver at any track. "It's always nice to come back to places where you've run well," Blaney said. "It gives you a little bit more of a sense of confidence, like, 'OK, I know what I need to be to be fairly decent here or contend for a top five or the win.' It wasn't always that way. I was terrible here my first two or three years at it and we worked really hard at figuring it out and it just kind of clicked one day and then it's funny how those things stick with you. It's like, 'OK, this is the mindset I have to have coming into here,' and it's just kind of stuck." [caption id="attachment_464402" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]From atop the pit box ...
What do crew chiefs have in focus to win Sunday's race? There's continuity and carryover in the Goodyear tires that will be on track at Martinsville, but that race-ready rubber will remain a key factor in how teams approach Sunday's Cup Series showdown. Goodyear officials are providing the same tire setup that Cup Series teams competed on for the first time last fall at Martinsville. The same combination was also given to teams in the season-opening Cook Out Clash exhibition at Bowman Gray Stadium. The trend toward a competitive tire with more progressive wear has fueled the use of this compound, which was well-received by drivers and crew chiefs, even with the postseason's ultimate goals on the line last November. "The tire was really good last year and was obviously a step out there for the race before the championship race," said Rudy Fugle, crew chief for William Byron's No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. "For everybody, there was a lot of worry and whatnot, with a lack of testing really on the tire, but it turned out to be really good, I thought during the race, and at Bowman Gray, it was pretty good as well. So Goodyear's doing a good job. Yeah, you can really hurt them, you can manage them, and no matter what, they're going to fall off some." Teams learned about the tires' effectiveness over the course of a 500-lap grinder last fall, discovering the limits and shaping the strategy around them to match. Weather so far this weekend has been far warmer than last November, with temperatures soaring into the 70s, but there's also a better than slight chance for rain in Sunday's forecast. Wet-weather tires will be available should the skies create damp conditions, giving crew chiefs another variable to manage. MORE: Wet-weather tires 101 The softer compound tires -- even in ideal conditions -- are a strategy component in themselves. "I think it's a great step in the right direction," said Drew Blickensderfer, crew chief for Noah Gragson's No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford. "I think what we saw last fall is the tire falls off to a certain point, you start running the same speed, and then it kind of tanks off a cliff. And the way the stages play out here, that comes into effect probably the most in the final stage, either in the spring or in the fall, because of the length. You don't want to come to pit road to Martinsville under green, but when it looks like you might make a green-flag stop, you got to really watch your times to see when it starts tanking, and that's what we see a lot of Next Gen tires, it just got accelerated here with this softer compound, I think maybe one step softer, if we can get those to be consistent, would be a great, great version for us. "But both here in the fall and what I expect this spring is probably in the middle of the run, it won't be much different from the harder tire, but then toward the end of the runs, at the end of the stages, at the end of that third stage, when people pit, things like that, it creates more of a comer-and-goer (situation) and a strategy race that adds some excitement." [caption id="attachment_464400" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]History tells us ...
Count on a Kyle Larson top five. The former Cup Series champion didn't click with Martinsville's tricky layout right away, with just two top fives in his first 15 races here, but he's been dynamite in his more recent runs. His average Martinsville finish is a series-best 2.8 over his last five Martinsville races, including two poles and a 2023 springtime triumph.