Posted on by Staff Report

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — The No. 24 Chevrolet of driver William Byron failed pre-race inspection Sunday morning at Martinsville Speedway, dropping the car to the bottom of the starting lineup for Sunday’s STP 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM).

After the inspection failure for mechanical measurements, NASCAR officials disallowed the car’s speed posted in Saturday’s Busch Pole Qualifying session. Byron was scheduled to take the green flag sixth in Sunday’s 500-lapper, but instead will start 34th.

RELATED: Official lineup, team rosters for race

The right side of Byron’s car was damaged in Saturday’s opening practice when it hit the wall, and he took it to the garage for repairs. Byron’s car passed inspection on its second time through.

Joey Logano won the provisional Busch Pole in Saturday’s qualifying session, marking his fifth pole position at the .526-mile track since 2015. His Team Penske No. 22 Ford was all clear in its pass through the inspection stations.

The No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet driven by D.J. Kennington also failed the Optical Scanning Station and will start 35th. Kennington qualified 34th on Saturday. The No. 52 Rick Ware Racing Chevrolet of Jeb Burton was the third car marked as TD (time disallowed) on the official lineup sheet, and he will start 36th.

Posted on by Marissa Fuller

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — It was a happy ending at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday for Ben Rhodes, who finished second in the No. 99 ThorSport Racing Ford after starting 16th in the TruNorth Global 250. That kind of rebound was just what the doctor ordered for the young team in its fourth race of the 2019 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series season.

Rhodes, who is competing in his fourth full-time season, had been off to a slow start, with a fifth-place showing in Atlanta sandwiched by finishes of 14th in Daytona and 25th in Las Vegas.

Saturday’s runner-up finish marked the start of something good, according to 22-year-old Rhodes.

RELATED: Full Truck Series results

“This was just a solid rebound to get everybody pumped up and ready to attack the rest of the season,” he said.

But if it wasn’t for the work of the No. 99 pit crew, Rhodes wasn’t “quite sure that we’d get a finish like that after qualifying so bad.”

“My pit crew has done an amazing job,” he said. “I give a lot of credit to the guys on the pit box and the pit crew for getting me my spots today. We came in, they made a really good call and before I knew it I was up front — thanks to them.”

Rhodes’ ThorSport team is made up of guys primarily in their early to late 20s, working together for the first time. Although Rhodes finished fifth in the standings last season and notched his second career victory, it wasn’t a seamless transition to this season.

“I mean, I’m 22, my engineer is 24 and my spotter is, like, 27,” Rhodes said. “This is an all new team, new trucks, everything is different. I feel like we’re logging notes and we’re getting better with our setups as we go. I know what we’ve got to do to get better — it’s just a matter of doing it.”

The Truck Series heads to Texas Motor Speedway next weekend and the momentum of back-to-back race weekends is something that the No. 99 team is eager to capitalize on.

“It makes a difference,” Rhodes said. “Running back-to-back with a young team like mine, we’re all new together, we have to keep this momentum going and that’s what I’m happy about with this finish.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – With surgical efficiency, Joey Logano continued his domination of knockout qualifying at Martinsville Speedway.

Saving his car and his tires for the final round of Saturday’s time trials at the .526-mile short track, Logano won the pole for Sunday’s STP 500 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with a lap at 97.830 mph (19.356 seconds). (The results of Logano’s pole win were confirmed when the No. 22 passed Sunday morning inspection.)

Driving the No. 22 Team Penske Ford, Logano edged Stewart-Haas Racing Ford driver Aric Almirola (97.643 mph) for the top starting spot by .037 seconds. Brad Keselowski (97.458 mph) qualified third, followed by Kevin Harvick (97.382 mph), as Ford drivers captured the top four positions on the grid.

The Busch Pole Award was Logano’s first of the season, his fifth at Martinsville and the 21st of his career. Logano ran only three laps total in the first two rounds, allowing him to save his tires for a four-lap run in the final round. His last lap was his fastest.

MORE: See official starting lineup

“It’s awesome to get another pole and hopefully we can top it off with another win,” said Logano, who used a victory in last year’s Playoff race at Martinsville as a springboard to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship. “This is a fun race. I always look forward to coming up here.”

Logano has earned his five of the last seven contested poles at Martinsville over a nine-race span, with two of the qualifying sessions canceled because of adverse weather.

All told, Fords claimed six of the top 12 starting positions, including Team Penske drivers Logano and Keselowski and all four Stewart-Haas Racing drivers — Almirola, Harvick, Daniel Suarez (ninth) and Clint Bowyer (10th). In contrast to Logano’s economical runs, Bowyer had 16 laps on his tires at the end of the final round.

Five-time Martinsville winner Denny Hamlin paced the first two rounds but had to settle for fifth when the starting order for the top 12 drivers was decided. Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. (eighth) were the only Toyota drivers to make the final round.

William Byron was sixth fastest in the money round, but his car failed pre-race inspection, his time disallowed, and he will start 34th instead. That moved Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyle Larson up to sixth as the top Chevrolet ahead of Hendrick Motorsports drivers Chase Elliott (seventh) and Jimmie Johnson (11th), who leads active drivers with nine victories at the paperclip-shaped track.

MORE: No. 24 car fails pre-race inspection

Trying for his third straight Cup win on Sunday — not to mention a weekend sweep of the Martinsville races — Saturday’s NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series victor Kyle Busch will start 13th in the STP 500.

“Too loose — just didn’t have it with track conditions today,” said Busch, who opted not to make a mock qualifying run during practice.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – A week after locking up his 200th NASCAR national series victory at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, Kyle Busch took the first step toward the next century mark.

Holding off challenges from Ross Chastain and runner-up Ben Rhodes, Busch survived a late restart in winning Saturday’s TruNorth Global 250 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway.

The race ended under a last-lap caution, after Reid Wilson’s No. 44 Chevrolet spun in Turn 4 and nosed toward the inside wall. Rhodes was running second when the yellow flag waved, with reigning series champion Brett Moffitt third and Chastain fourth.

MORE: Full race results

The victory was Busch’s second at the .526-mile short track in his own Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota. Busch has won each of his three starts this season and now has 54 victories in Trucks, extending his series record.

“These guys worked really, really hard this weekend,” Busch said of crew chief Rudy Fugle and the No. 51 team. “We unloaded, and I didn’t like where we were at. We made wholesale changes to this thing all weekend long and just tried to keep improving this Cessna Beechcraft Tundra and make it faster. …

“All these guys kept trying to make it turn the center (of the corner) better. At Martinsville, you have to turn the center without getting too loose in or too loose off. … And we had enough tire at the end to hold them all off.”

Busch led 174 of the 250 laps, including the final 66. He passed Chastain for the top spot on Lap 185 and held it the rest of the way through four subsequent cautions before the final restart with three circuits remaining.

“Today we just kind of let the race play out and come to us,” Busch said.

Rhodes had a second-place car but not a race winner — and he knew it.

“It was a good day at Martinsville,” Rhodes conceded. “It was the best finish I’ve had here yet. I was surprised — qualifying 16th. We had a fast Ford F150, but we just needed a little more. We got beat by the best in the business. He knows what he’s doing here.

“It was fun following him and seeing how he was pacing himself. That’s something I’ve struggled with in the past. … Anytime you restart next to that guy, I try to log it in my memory banks so I can just try and get him next time.”

Pole winner Stewart Friesen finished fifth after leading 19 laps, third most behind Busch and Chastain (53). Myatt Snider, Grant Enfinger, Matt Crafton, Johnny Sauter and Bubba Wallace completed the top 10.

French Canadian driver Raphael Lessard finished 14th in his first start in the Truck Series.

WATCH: Fire erupts under Gus Dean’s Chevy

Posted on by Reid Spencer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Joey Logano offers understanding, but no apologies.

After he applied the bumper to Martin Truex Jr.’s Toyota in the final corner of last year’s fall race at Martinsville Speedway, Logano edged past Truex for the race victory and a guaranteed berth in the Championship 4 event at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

In that season finale, Logano went on to win his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title.

RELATED: Almirola’s take on bumping for the win

Logano understood why Truex was upset at being denied his first short-track win on the final lap. But Logano wasn’t sorry.

Given that the series is returning to Martinsville this weekend for the first time since last November’s memorable race, it was inevitable that the subject of the bump-and-run would come up.

“I mean, it’s in the past at this point,” Logano said. “But I think at that point Martin texted me and, like I told you guys, he was pretty clear that he was frustrated with the move. I understood, and I think he understood why I had to do it, and it kind of played out and worked out, but my move to him was that I didn’t wreck you. I gave the old bump-and-run.

“That happened 15 times a race here at Martinsville, and that one was just a little more popular. I think there’s a fine line. You don’t want to straight out bump somebody on purpose, but you also, when it comes down to the end of the race like that and there’s that much on the line … that was our shot to win a championship.

“So I think every driver has a line that they are OK with and that you can go to sleep at the end of the night and say, ‘I did what I had to do and I’m all right with it,’ and if it happened to me, you have to be OK with that as well. I think that was the situation for me that I was trying to explain to him.”

Posted on by Reid Spencer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Perhaps the most uncomfortable feeling at any race track comes from stabbing the brakes and feeling the pedal sink to the floorboard.

That’s what happened to Corey LaJoie, whose No. 32 GoFas Racing Ford crashed hard into the Turn 1 wall after his brakes failed in Saturday’s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway.

The car suffered extensive front-end damage, leaving the right front tire barely rolling at a cockeyed angle as LaJoie nursed the car back to pit road.

RELATED: Photos of the wreck | Practice results

“I’ll tell you, there is no coffee strong enough that will wake you up like losing brakes into Turn 1 at Martinsville,” LaJoie said after the crash. “It’s not a good feeling, losing brakes. It had like a half-pedal, and then it felt like it blew through the seal or something.

“It’s unfortunate, because small teams like ours, we don’t really bring a backup (car) that’s fully ready to go, so my guys have a lot of work ahead of them. I’ll probably pitch in and help a little bit, but, obviously, our backup is not going to be as good as the car that we choose and bring as our primary.”

Posted on by Staff Report

PRACTICE 2

Chase Elliott led a Hendrick Motorsports sweep in Saturday’s final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway, his No. 9 Chevrolet posting a fast lap of 97.543 mph.

A pair of Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammates also rounded out the top three: Alex Bowman was second-quickest in the No. 88 (96.627 mph), while nine-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson laid down a 96.612-mph lap to rank third on the speed charts. Hendrick Motorsports has 24 wins at Martinsville Speedway, the most by one team at a single track in NASCAR history.  Johnson most recently won for the organization at “The Paperclip” in fall 2016, the same year he won the series championship.

MORE: Full practice results

Austin Dillon became the fourth Chevrolet to post a top-five speed in the final session, his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet notching the fourth spot with a 96.548-mph lap. Paul Menard’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford completed the top five (96.538 mph).

Reigning race winner Clint Bowyer, who paced Saturday’s opening session, was 12th-quickest in final practice.

Saturday’s final practice ended under caution, as Cody Ware hit the wall hard in his No. 51.

The Monster Energy Series returns to the track for Busch Pole Qualifying at 5:10 p.m. ET on FS1.

PRACTICE 1

Defending winner Clint Bowyer returned to the top of the leaderboard at Martinsville Speedway in Saturday’s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice. Bowyer’s No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford notched a fast lap of 97.674 mph around “The Paperclip.”

He was joined in the top three by two of his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates, as Daniel Suarez (97.257 mph) and Aric Almirola (97.003 mph) ranked second- and third-quickest, respectively.

Martin Truex Jr., who is still searching for his first career short-track victory, came up fourth in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (96.939 mph), while Phoenix and Auto Club winner Kyle Busch rounded out the top five in his No. 18 Toyota (96.884 mph).

Martinsville’s most recent winner Joey Logano — who won the series’ Playoff trip to the short track in 2018 — was eighth-fastest.

RELATED: Full practice results | Martinsville schedule

William Byron hit the wall early, sustaining right-front fender damage on his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. He headed to the garage afterward.

Corey LaJoie brought out a caution midway through practice when his No. 32 Go Fas Racing Ford got into the wall. LaJoie said the team was going to a backup car for Sunday’s race.

“That just sucks because we were making it really good,” LaJoie said. “I think we were 20th at the time, but I’ll tell you there is no coffee strong enough that will wake you up like losing brakes into Turn 1 at Martinsville. It’s not a good feeling losing brakes. It had like a half-pedal and then it felt like it blew through the seal or something. It’s unfortunate because small teams like ours we don’t really bring a backup that’s fully ready to go, so my guys have a lot of work ahead of them. I’ll probably pitch in and help a little bit, but, obviously, our backup is not gonna be as good as the car that we choose and bring as our primary.”

The No. 34 of Michael McDowell served a 15-minute penalty at the end of practice for multiple pre-race inspection failures last weekend at Auto Club Speedway.

Posted on by Holly Cain

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Even JTG Daugherty Racing’s Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate, Ryan Preece, can appreciate the irony. For a young talented driver renowned for his short track background and expertise, his best showing so far this year is a top 10 in the Daytona 500 on the sport’s most famous superspeedway.

Preece, 28, is genuinely optimistic, however, to feature those skills that helped him rise in the stock car ranks when the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races Sunday in the STP 500 (at 2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the Martinsville Speedway half-miler.

This is Preece’s wheelhouse, as they say.

He already owns a Martinsville grandfather clock trophy from a win there in 2008 – the first of 22 victories in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour – a series the Connecticut native won the championship in 2013.

RELATED: Preece among fantasy sleeper picks

“It’s what most of us that come through the ranks grow up doing,” Preece said of short-track racing. “Heavy braking, getting the car turned, being able to drive off the corner, pick the throttle up as quick as possible. It’s something that I’m used to doing.

“These mile-and-a-halves, that’s just a different package where you’re on the throttle so much, it’s kind of outside the nature of what I’m used to doing. Kind of going to a place like Martinsville, and I would say even the next few races, it’s going to be very familiar to what my background is.

“It makes me very optimistic. Obviously if you look back at JTG’s runs with AJ [Allmendinger] and even Chris [Buescher] last year, they ran really well. It makes me very excited to go there this weekend.”

Allmendinger, who previously drove the No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet Camaro that Preece now drives, had five top-10 finishes in 10 Martinsville races with the team between 2014-2018, including a best showing of runner-up in the spring of 2016.

Six of Preece’s 17 career top-10 finishes in the Xfinity Series have come on tracks one-mile or shorter, including wins at Iowa Speedway (2017) and Bristol Motor Speedway (2018).

Even with his particular background and place atop the current Sunoco Rookie of the Year standings, he insisted this week he is, at best, cautiously optimistic about his Martinsville Monster Energy Series debut. It’s a careful balance of managing expectations and carrying confidence.

“Man, the expectations?” he said. “It’s hard to say without being there or running there with the team. I mean, my expectations when I go to a short track are to be a contender. Really at this point, it’s to have a really smooth weekend, run top-10 most of the day. If we can get a top-five, that would be fantastic.

“Definitely short tracks like Martinsville, Bristol, New Hampshire, those are kind of in my wheelhouse. It’s something I’ve been doing for a long time. When it comes to the restarts and all those moments of being aggressive, it’s something that I enjoy doing.

“As far as what I expect, I expect that we should show really well and at least be running top-10 and hopefully get a top-five by the end of the weekend.”

There should certainly be a good vibe at Martinsville for Preece. His success there initially put him on the map for NASCAR teams searching for young, untapped talent.

He acknowledged, however, his short track debut in NASCAR’s big leagues will be a definitive new test. The hard-nosed, bumper-on-you style that has long characterized this form of exciting full-contact racing will be a brand new arc on Preece’s learning curve. But, he said this week, he feels absolutely ready for it.

“I’ve never been anybody who really wants to put a bumper to someone,” Preece said. “I always try to find a way around them without doing that.

“At the end of the day, I think we all just look for respect. You’re going to race somebody the way they race you. I’m going to fully intend on going into the weekend just like I would a Modified [race], that’s finding a way around without using them up.

“At the end of the day, as long as we’re respectful to others, I believe you get respect back. That’s kind of how I’m going to approach it. I don’t fully intend on going there and smashing people.”

RELATED: Full schedule for Martinsville

The style and philosophy has certainly worked for Preece, who leads the Sunoco Rookie standings for fourth time in the season’s opening five weeks. He’s ranked 25th overall, tops among the four-driver 2019 rookie class with one top-10 (his Daytona 500 debut). He was involved in wrecks at both Atlanta and Phoenix but responded last week with a 23rd-place effort in Fontana, Calif.

In six years, Preece has made 67 starts in either the Xfinity or Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, but had the chance previously to run only a single full season – the 2016 Xfinity Series schedule for team JD Motorsports.

So the encouraging start to 2019 says a lot about Preece’s natural ability, but also about his huge drive to make good on this opportunity.

“It’s nice,” Preece said of leading the rookie standings. “It’s showing that we’re right there. But Daniel [Hemric], he’s shown a lot of speed, especially during the West Coast Swing. That’s something we addressed in the meetings yesterday.

“Our goal at the beginning of the year was to make the Playoffs. We’re kind of in a hole right now because of Atlanta and because of Phoenix. It’s really put us behind.

“We just really need to turn it around and get to where the 37 is running and hopefully sneak in some top-10s and be up front. It’s definitely not from a lack of effort. Hopefully we can turn things around and really fight these guys.”

Posted on by

On his decorated resume, Martin Truex Jr. has a 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship, a coveted Coca-Cola 600 victory and 18 additional wins on speedways and road courses in NASCAR’s top competition. But one feat that has eluded the Joe Gibbs Racing driver in his career is a short-track win — a box he’ll look to check this weekend at 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway.

That’s not to say Truex hasn’t been close, especially in recent years where he’s been agonizingly close. Truex has been passed for the win within the final 11 laps in three of the last eight short-track races.

He notably — and most recently — came within mere feet of Martinsville’s Victory Lane in the series’ fall trip to Virginia on Oct. 28, 2018; Truex was pacing the field when Joey Logano moved him for the victory in the final corner at the Virginia track. Logano went on to win the championship less than a month later.

WATCH: Logano moves Truex on last lap at Martinsville

With frustration and heartbreak his most recent memory from “The Paperclip,” Truex will head to the Virginia oval this weekend likely looking for redemption. He certainly has the team equipped to get it done. In the last 10 years, Joe Gibbs Racing has notched the most short-track wins with 27 trips to Victory Lane. Their 27 victories in a decade is more than Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske and Stewart-Haas Racing combined during that time period.

In their complete short-track history, JGR has posted 35 victories with Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Bobby Labonte behind the wheel. Of those six drivers, Hamlin, Stewart and Labonte all scored their first short-track win while driving for Joe Gibbs Racing.

So, what are the odds that Truex, in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing, will become the fourth driver to do so in Sunday’s showdown? Looking at his recent Martinsville runs, his chances are high. He’s led the second-most laps on short tracks without a win (1,215) behind Sterling Marlin’s 1,221 laps led, making him arguably the best driver in NASCAR history who hasn’t won at a short track. Truex’s past three races at Martinsville in particular have resulted in three straight top-five finishes.

MORE: Martinsville 101 | All-time Martinsville spring winners

Sunday’s race at Martinsville could — and may be — the stage where Truex finally gives a winning performance at a short track.

Only time will tell – or in Martinsville’s case, the winner’s grandfather clock trophy.