Posted on by Zack Albert

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Similarities abounded Sunday at what could be Jeff Gordon‘s second final race of his NASCAR career.

Like his most recent farewell last November at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he posed for a pre-race team photo with Hendrick Motorsports personnel. And though there was far less fanfare in Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Gordon wound up with the same result — a sixth-place finish in his final start before heading back into retirement.

Or is it? Gordon said “based on the information I have in front of me,” it was. “But I didn’t see me running eight races this year, either.”

The four-time premier series champion’s capable relief stint this season in place of injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. came to a close Sunday at the .526-mile track where he’s enjoyed many successes — nine of his 93 career wins. Among active Sprint Cup Series drivers, only teammate Jimmie Johnson has as many Martinsville triumphs, tying Gordon’s benchmark with a victory in Sunday’s 500-lapper.

The 45-year-old Gordon showed plenty of pep in his Martinsville swan song, logging loads of laps among the top five. A slight fade over the final green-flag stretch left him with a top-10 effort and the best result of his interim tenure in the No. 88.

“Well, I would rather have won,” Gordon said. “I felt like we had a fourth- or fifth-place car the run before that so I always wanted to get the most out of it. I was a little disappointed it didn’t take off there at the end. … But I was proud of this team, proud of my performance. Best finish I’ve had in this car, so all in all, it was a good way to end our run here this year in (the) 88 car, and I think it’s going to be the last one. We’ll see.”

If team owner Rick Hendrick has his say — and he joked Sunday that he typically does — Gordon may still have some racing left to do. When Earnhardt’s concussion-like symptoms first were diagnosed this summer, Hendrick said Gordon was atop his list as a possible replacement.

The longtime car owner and NASCAR Hall of Fame electee said Sunday’s performance did little to sway that notion, confirming that “absolutely” Gordon would be his first call from the bullpen.

“In the middle of the race, he was coming. Man, he could win this thing,” Hendrick said. “It’s really tough to be out of the car and jump back in and race with these guys without having the week-to-week input into the car.

“Don’t you guys agree, he’s too young to retire? I mean, he’s too good. Maybe we’ll vote him back in. Maybe we can come up with a new deal.”

New driving assignments notwithstanding, Gordon will head back to the broadcasting booth with FOX Sports in 2017. But before making that transition, the future Hall of Famer took time Sunday to savor another celebrated send-off.

“Just like Homestead, you don’t really know how special some of those moments are until years down the road,” Gordon said, “or maybe that’s just my personality when I can reflect on it, go back through my career. This has really done a lot for me integrating into the team and the organization. … It’s memorable, certainly, but I think it’s ironic that this is the last one.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

RELATED: Complete race results | Updated Chase Grid


MARTINSVILLE, Va. — One week after three Joe Gibbs Racing cars finished in order by executing a conservative strategy at Talladega Superspeedway, another JGR trio repeated the bumper-to-bumper feat Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.


This time, however, the approach was a far less conservative tack, one that spurred some slight discord among the group.

As race winner Jimmie Johnson held off Brad Keselowski down the stretch in the Goody’s Fast Relief 500, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch — in order — neatly rounded out the top five. Their results provided JGR’s championship bid with a points boost, but fell short of the automatic transfer spot secured by Johnson on the .526-mile bullring.

Their stature in the standings was slightly obscured by their hard-nosed racing down the stretch, something that Busch said allowed Johnson’s No. 48 Chevrolet and Keselowski’s No. 2 Ford to scoot away in the late-afternoon sun.

“You can’t wreck each other and that’s all there is to it, I guess,” said Busch, the defending premier series champion. “We worked so good together that we gave the 48 car the win today. That’s how good JGR is. We had a great M&M’s Camry and we could have been a little farther up front, but we were held up there and we couldn’t pass and if I did try to make moves or try to make a pass, I got cut off. But we came through it with a top five.”

Last weekend at Talladega, Kenseth, teammate Carl Edwards and Busch lagged behind the main pack, playing it safe as a show of teamwork while Hamlin charged ahead to keep his Chase hopes alive. The back three finished 28th through 30th while Hamlin took third. All four JGR entries claimed spots in the Round of 8.

Sunday at Martinsville, Hamlin, Kenseth and Busch all led laps, with Kenseth accumulating a race-high 176 laps out front, with a conservative strategy out of the question. Only Edwards wasn’t among the late-race JGR contenders, crashing after a tire issue sent him into the wall with 142 laps remaining.


RELATED: Edwards hits wall, title hopes take big hit

Early in the race, Gibbs drivers extended the common courtesy to allow their teammates to quickly align single-file shortly after restarts. But once the late-race pressure ratcheted up a level, the give-and-take among teammates was far less generous.

“That’s the tough part of it, for sure,” said Hamlin, a five-time Martinsville winner. “We’re in a team business, but we’re also in a business to win for our sponsors and ourselves. I think at the end, you have to do what’s best for yourself. We made deals about restarts and things like that. Obviously, I think I got two taps or something like that from the 20 (Kenseth), but I definitely didn’t feel like we were holding anyone up at the end by any means. I didn’t even see the 18 (Busch) at the end.

“But, you know, it’s just part of it. We’re all frustrated. We had probably the first-, second-, third-fastest cars throughout the day, then we end up three, four, five. It’s frustrating for all of us.”

Joe Gibbs Racing still has four playoff-eligible drivers vying to be a part of the championship battle, but Johnson’s victory Sunday prevents the organization from making a Homestead clean sweep.

Two more chances for automatic berths exist next week at Texas Motor Speedway and the following weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

“We had a good day, not a great day,” Kenseth said. “The guy having a great day is the guy doing a burnout.”

 

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Complete race results | Chase Grid


MARTINSVILLE, Va. — It was the perfect storm at an imperfect time.


There was nothing unusual when, in the midst of a cycle of green-flag pit stops during Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, the caution flag appeared.

It’s a scenario that has played out numerous times for a series that features 36 points races each season and hundreds of laps in each race.

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, had hit the wall, and was scrambling to get to pit road on Lap 357 of the 500-lap event.

But while sorting out the various running positions of those competitors who already had pitted from those who had yet to come to pit road, situations developed. The leader, eventual race winner Jimmie Johnson, came to a stop on the track when he accidentally killed the power to his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, which was already short on fuel.

Once those who had yet to pit made their stops and officials were attempting to set the order for the restart, anxious drivers contested their spots in the lineup.

It was confusing, but officials said the important thing was to make sure the order was correct before resuming green-flag racing in the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup‘s Round of 8. In the meantime, 29 laps around the .526-mile track were run under yellow.

“Today was a very dynamic situation; it was unique, as you saw,” Sprint Cup Series Managing Director Richard Buck said afterward. “We were right in the middle of green flag pit stops and we had to go to a caution. That presents one set of issues that we deal with and then from that point as it moved along and we started to get the lineup as we normally do, it went to another dynamic when we had the leader run out of fuel. …

“We understand the stakes of the Chase. They’re extremely high for everybody. Our job is to get it right. We’ve got a tremendous amount of resources up there (in the tower). We then moved into another dynamic of it, the wave-arounds. We took our time to make sure we got it right; we feel confident that we got it right.”

“Wave-arounds” are those not on the lead lap that choose not to pit under yellow, but remain on the track and are awarded their lap back. They may not pit until the race has returned to green-flag conditions.



Buck said officials will have conversations with teams this week in an effort to help them understand how the restart lineup was determined in this case.



“We have the multiple (timing and scoring) loops, which are computer driven, we have that data that come to us,” he said. “We have multiple banks of cameras that are at our disposal and replay systems. We’ll time sync those up and that’s how we go through that process. We wanted to make sure we got it right; it took a while but we felt very confident that we got it right and came back racing.”



Several teams said the issue became muddied when they believe drivers took the wave around improperly based on their positions in the running order. Others said they felt the eventual determination was not the correct one.



“I don’t want to harp on NASCAR, but they’ve got to fix that scoring situation,” four-time series champion Jeff Gordon said. “… I don’t think it affected us a lot, but it wasn’t right the way that they scored it and it went green. And we had to ride for 30 laps under caution. That wasn’t good.”



Still others expressed a little more confidence in the outcome.



“I know at points like that, sitting up there being NASCAR, it’s the hardest thing in the world to run all those laps (under yellow),” Edwards said. “But it’s the right thing.”



Chad Knaus, crew chief for race winner Jimmie Johnson, called it “a challenge.”



“When you have 40 cars going around a half‑mile race track, people start to pit, one guy is 12 seconds back, the other guy is three seconds back. It’s still very, very confusing to me right now,” he said. “I really don’t want to talk a whole heck of a lot about it because in my little world, I have one perspective. They’re up in the deejay booth up top so they can know what’s going on. They have a better perspective than I, so I’m sure we’ll get some clarification.



“Right now I’m happy as hell. How is that?”



Buck said while officials always have the ability to red-flag an event, stopping all activities on the track, they felt they were headed “to a quick resolution” when the caution appeared for Edwards’ incident. As other issues began to unfold, he said, “It presented us with a completely different set of circumstances.



“We were focused at that time on making sure we got it right.”


NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O’Donnell took to Twitter after the race to respond to fan inquiries as well:

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — According to Martinsville Speedway officials, at least 10 fans attending Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 were injured in a post-race accident when they were struck by a motorist outside the facility.
 
A statement provided to media after the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event said: “Multiple individuals were struck by a vehicle, and the driver has been taken into police custody. Several people were treated on-site by emergency workers in the infield care center while others have been transported to a nearby hospital. We will monitor the situation closely with local authorities, and work with them to provide updates.”
 
The incident took place near the helipad located on the southern side of the facility.

Posted on by Nascar

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. and officials with Goody’s announced a new promotion Sunday that will consist of trading cards featuring NASCAR’s most popular driver inside boxes of the pain relief product.

But the Hendrick Motorsports driver believes fans will see him back on the track in the future as well.

“My intentions are to race and that’s the plan that we have going forward so we’re booking things as normal,” Earnhardt said during the morning press conference at Martinsville Speedway. “We’re doing all our photo shoots and everything with the anticipation of our sponsors marketing me as the driver of the (No.) 88 car. I think that that’s perfectly on track and a reasonable goal, to be in the car (and) to be competing at Daytona.

“We can’t sort of sit and wait … those types of things have to be decided quite early. So we’re moving forward with the plan for me to be in the car and I don’t see anything that says that’s not going to happen. Things are good.”

Earnhardt has been sidelined for the latter part of the Sprint Cup Series season due to concussion-like symptoms. He will resume his driving duties no sooner than the start of the 2017 racing season.

Returning to the track to kick off campaigns such as the Goody’s promotion, spending time in the television and radio booths and attending other functions, he said, has been crucial to helping expedite his recovery.

“Obviously I miss being in the car; I want to be in the car,” Earnhardt said. “I’d rather be racing. But until that happens, until I can get back in the car I have to do things to keep myself busy. Sitting at home is not a lot of fun. Those first few weeks trying to get better sitting at home and not really wanting to go anywhere wasn’t any fun at all.

“It’s awesome to be able to drive up here to do this press conference and talk about one of our promotions with Goody’s. To be able to have a chance to go in the booth, things like that are really, really good for me. It’s not only good therapy but I need to be doing something. I love being around the sport and I want to feel like I’m an asset. It’s very helpful.”

In his absence, Hendrick officials have split seat time between three-time series champion Jeff Gordon and youngster Alex Bowman in the No. 88 entry. Gordon is making his final start as a fill-in this weekend at Martinsville.

Earnhardt got high marks from fans and the media for his TV appearance — he spent time in the NBC broadcast booth last week when the series competed at Talladega Superspeedway. He is also a part of the broadcast team at Martinsville.

Easing his way back into the public eye has been different, but the transition appears to have gone smoothly.

“I wasn’t really sure how that was going to feel being around and coming to the track and stuff; I was a little nervous,” he said. “I talk to Rick (Hendrick) and I tell him all the time … being in the car is what I’m supposed to do and not being in the car brings on a sense of guilt that I’m not fulfilling my responsibilities. Maybe I’m actively seeking out these opportunities to be visible and be relevant, work with my partners and handle all the responsibilities that we have and had planned before all this happened.

“So I’ve been open and happy and excited to start booking all these photo shoots; if we want to go somewhere and do something that we’ve never done before — the (Carolina Hurricanes) hockey game, football game, stuff like that, that’s been a real good time.”


Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Full race results | Updated Chase Grid
IN-CAR: Hamlin reacts to battle with Johnson


MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Two drivers who have mastered Martinsville Speedway were at it again here Sunday, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin charging hard into the tight turns of the tiny half-mile, rubbing sheet metal and trading paint.

Johnson added to his collection of grandfather clocks, winning the race and the iconic timepiece for the ninth time. But not without a fight from Hamlin, the Virginia native who has five career wins at Martinsville, himself.

Hamlin, one of four Joe Gibbs Racing teams to advance to the Round of 8 in NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, finished third after leading nearly 50 laps earlier in the day, trailing Johnson and Brad Keselowski (Team Penske) across the finish line.

Johnson will advance to Homestead-Miami, one of four drivers who will be competing for the title. Hamlin has ideas of his own, and races at Texas and Phoenix in the coming weeks to secure his own spot among the Championship 4.



On Sunday, the two were racing for the position when contact occurred just shy of the 200-lap mark in the 500-lap Goody’s Fast Relief 500.



“My side is that he really put us in a bad spot at New Hampshire on a restart for 13th or 15th or something,” Hamlin said of the earlier Chase race. “About wrecked us, pretty much. So I voiced my displeasure with him after the race. …



“I raced him hard for the lead … which is a big, big difference, at Charlotte. I think that Chad (Knaus, crew chief of the 48) and those guys were frustrated with me and how I was holding those guys up for the lead. But it is the lead.”



The position and timing were different this time out, Hamlin said, noting that the battle was for seventh and it was still in the first half of the race.



“He just wasn’t wanting to give up the spot,” Hamlin said, adding that he had “ran him down from the back of the pack basically.



“It was just costing both of us time. It was frustrating both of us. I gave those guys many, many laps to give us the position before I had to move him.”



Johnson, the six-time series champion, was nonplussed by the reaction from his fellow competitor.



“Man, I’m out there to win,” he said. “I got accused of racing hard? I’ll take that as a compliment.”



It was a day for overcoming obstacles for Hamlin, whose saw his golf cart “wiped out” Sunday morning and learned his car had fallen off a jack while undergoing pre-race prep.


RELATED: Despite bad pre-race luck, Hamlin finishes third

Then, there was yet another speeding penalty in the early stages of the race and the battle with Johnson. Even the latter portion wasn’t without a bit of concern, as Hamlin and JGR teammates Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth tried to reel in Johnson.



It was a battle that sealed their collective fate, according to Busch.



“You can’t wreck each other and that’s all there is to it, I guess,” said Busch, who finished fifth. “We worked so good together that we gave the 48 car the win today. That’s how good JGR is.”



But Hamlin said none of the three was going to catch the leader, and “nobody was on my rear bumper at the end of the race.



“Someone’s upset; I think it’s just because we all had a top‑three car during the end of the race and we ended up three, four, five,” he said. “That’s never happy.”


Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Race results | Series standings | Updated Chase Grid
SHOP: Chase gear

“Six-Time” has the chance to earn a new nickname, thanks to Jimmie Johnson‘s victory Sunday at Martinsville Speedway in the opener of the three-race Round of 8.


Johnson, a six-time Sprint Cup champion, led the final 92 laps — all coming after he had a tire rub that required body repairs on Lap 198 of 500 following contact with Denny Hamlin. The triumph pushes Johnson to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the first time since the current Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format began in 2014.


MORE: Hamlin heated following contact with Johnson


The field will be cut to four after two more races, at Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway to determine who will be vying for the 2016 Sprint Cup Series championship.


Before the season enters its final three races, let’s take a look at what the Chase picture holds after Sunday’s race at the short track.


Who’s hot: Johnson’s dominance at Martinsville should not come has a surprise: He now has won nine times at the “Paperclip.” It’s his rally that should be commended. He captured the checkered flag after suffering damage that resulted in tire rub early, making the victory somewhat remarkable.

Joe Gibbs Racing continued its strong run in the Chase, with Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch finishing three-four-five. All three led laps at Martinsville, with Kenseth leading a race-high 176 laps and Hamlin out front for 48 laps. Busch led three circuits. 


Who’s not: Stewart-Haas Racing had a terrible day, with Kurt Busch faring most miserably of two SHR drivers in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.


Busch had trouble keeping up with the leaders from the start, and finished 22nd — three laps down.


His teammate, Kevin Harvick, earned a pit road speeding penalty on Lap 131 — when he was running in fourth place. That sent him to the rear of the field, and he never recovered. Harvick finished 20th and two laps down.


But the worst luck of all hit Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards, who slammed into the outside wall on Lap 357 of 500 when his right front tire went down. Edwards’ No. 19 Toyota suffered enough damage that he went to the garage for repairs, but he was able to return to finish 36th, 23 laps down.

RELATED: Edwards hits the wall at Martinsville


Four in, four out: Here’s a look at the Chase bubble, with four drivers being eliminated after the penultimate race of the season, Nov. 13 at Phoenix International Raceway (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Chase Bubble Watch

Standing Driver Points Differential from Cut-off
1. Jimmie Johnson *Locked in with Martinsville win
2. Denny Hamlin +6
3. Matt Kenseth +6
4. Kyle Busch +4
———— CUT-OFF LINE ————
5. Joey Logano -4
6. Kevin Harvick -16
7. Kurt Busch -18
8. Carl Edwards -32

Up next: AAA Texas 500, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2 p.m. ET, Texas Motor Speedway (NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)


Who it favors
Most wins: Jimmie Johnson, 6 (26 races); Carl Edwards, 3 (23 races).
Best driver rating: Jimmie Johnson 107.8 (26 races); Matt Kenseth 104.9 (27 races); Kyle Busch 102.9 (21 races).
Best average finish: Jimmie Johnson, 8.3 (26 races); Matt Kenseth 9.5 (27 races); Kyle Busch 11.9 (21 races).

Who it hurts
Worst percentage of top 10s: Joey Logano, 37.5 percent (6 in 16 races); Denny Hamlin, 47.6 percent (10 in 21 races); Kyle Busch, 52.4 percent (11 in 21 races).
Worst driver rating: Joey Logano, 80.5 (16 races); Kurt Busch, 88.5 (27 races); Kevin Harvick 89.1 (27 races).
Worst average finish: Joey Logano, 17.5 (16 races); Kurt Busch, 15.3 (27 races); Carl Edwards, 14.2 (23 races).

Posted on by Staff Report

Carl Edwards slammed hard into the outside wall in Turn 1 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday after the right front tire on his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota apparently went down, and he was forced to the garage.

Following a lengthy caution, Edwards returned to the race but finished the day in 36th, 23 laps down. The JGR driver is now eighth in points and 32 points behind teammate Kyle Busch for the final transfer spot to the Championship 4 with two races left in the Round of 8.

“We had a really good race going and sometimes that’s just what happens in racing,” Edwards said. “I think we had a top-three car. I was having a lot of fun, and now we just go to Texas and try to win there and Phoenix — we could win at either one of those race tracks.”

 

Edwards had been running in the top 10 when his No. 19 car smacked the wall — during a period of green-flag pit stops — on Lap 357 of 500 in the Goody’s Fast Relief 500. As a result, his car went spinning onto the grass.

In the remaining tracks in the Round of 8, Edwards has three wins at Texas and two at Phoenix.  

Contributing: NASCAR Wire Service

Posted on by Staff Report

MORE: Race results | Chase Grid | Race recap

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Denny Hamlin‘s car sustained slight damage before his third-place finish in Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway.
 
Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota sat on the grid before Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 with wrinkled sheet metal just behind the left-front tire. NBC Sports reported that the car had fallen off a jack stand during pre-race tuning.

But that wasn’t the only hiccup in Hamlin’s pre-race routine: A tractor put a golf cart carrying Hamlin and a few others in quite the precarious position.

“I thought it was a great start to my day, getting wiped out on the golf cart and my car falling off that jack,” Hamlin said sarcastically of his bizzare pre-race incidents.

“… The tractor that pulls the trailer onto the track just wiped us out. I jumped off the cart because I saw it was coming, the other guys stayed on and (were) going to take a ride. But it cleaned us out pretty good … it just destroyed it.”

It reminded Hamlin of another large truck.

“Yeah, you ever seen BigFoot and those cars they set up for him to jump over?” Hamlin said, referring to the Monster Truck. “We were the car.”


Despite Hamlin’s poor luck before the 500-lapper, he heads into next weekend’s Texas Motor Speedway race (2 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) second on the Chase Grid — only behind race victor Jimmie Johnson.

MORE: Hamlin frustrated following on-track incident with Johnson


Posted on by Staff Report

Kurt Busch said before Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway that he and Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Kevin Harvick are on good terms after a confrontation following last week’s race at Talladega Superspeedway.


On the cool-down lap after the Hellmann’s 500 a week ago, Busch rubbed doors with Harvick. After they parked, Harvick walked over to Busch, who was still sitting in his race car, leaned inside and had words with his teammates after delivering a jab inside the window.


“Well, I thought there was miscommunication on what was supposed to happen on track,” Busch told NBCSN prior to the Martinsville race. “We would be much better off not having Denny Hamlin and the 22 (of Joey Logano) in the Chase, those are two strong cars. But we had a miscommunication breakdown. Just the way Kevin reacted was not very appropriate, but we talked about it and it’s all good.”


Hamlin narrowly beat Busch to the start/finish line to place third in the race, and advanced to the Round of 8 in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.


Busch finished fourth and Harvick finished seventh in the race. Both Busch and Harvick are among the eight drivers battling for the championship as the Round of 8 begins.