Posted on by NASCAR Official Release

NEW YORK and DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR, the sanctioning body for the No. 1 motorsport in the United States, is enhancing its NASCAR Mobile app experience by launching a new In-App Stories product from WSC Sports, the global leader in AI-powered sports video content.

In-App Stories offers NASCAR fans a user-friendly, multi-clip vertical video experience in a format they are familiar with seeing on other social media platforms. Fans can tap into the new experience on race weekends and beyond, as the stories will provide live in-race highlights for NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series, and Craftsman Truck Series races. Additionally, In-App Stories will have a prominent place on the NASCAR Mobile homepage throughout the week, so fans can continue to engage with the best on-track action and additional stories centered around their favorite drivers.

“NASCAR’s unique style of close, side-by-side racing delivers plenty of highlight-reel moments each week and In-App Stories are an ideal way for us to deliver the type of compelling content fans crave on mobile,” said Wyatt Hicks, vice president of Digital Media at NASCAR. “We’re eager to continue collaborating with WSC Sports and building deeper connections with NASCAR fans around the world.”

generates image of nascar app
NASCAR Digital Media

The new integration comes as part of an expanded partnership between NASCAR and WSC Sports, in which NASCAR has been using the WSC Sports platform to quickly ingest and create highlight content from a multitude of video sources. The expansion coincides with NASCAR’s continued brand resurgence and growth the past several years, including increases in unique users, visits and page views inside the NASCAR Mobile app to start 2024.

“We are thrilled to be growing our partnership with NASCAR,” said Aviv Arnon, chief business development officer at WSC Sports. “Together, WSC Sports and NASCAR have taken initial steps towards giving fans even closer access to racing content and I am certain the path of innovation will continue. For this racing season, fans will be able to connect with their favorite NASCAR drivers on a scale like never before.”

The In-App Stories solution is beneficial for media rights holders like NASCAR in augmenting owned and operated platforms with vertical video content in a seamless, technologically forward way. It allows rights holders to instantly update their website and mobile app to fit fan consumption behaviors driven by other social media platforms. For NASCAR specifically, the In-App Stories SDK paired with WSC Sports’ content automation will allow the league to promote personalized content specific to each driver or what is currently happening in that weekend’s race within dedicated content widgets. In-App Stories bring valuable opportunities for media rights holders to share their content on a more intimate level in a more immersive experience to a global audience while also retaining important user data.

For more information, visit wsc-sports.com and nascar.com.

Posted on by Zack Albert

Kyle Larson will enter the next phase in his bid for his Indianapolis 500 debut this week when Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosts a two-day open test.

Larson will be among the entrants for Wednesday and Thursday sessions in preparation for the 108th running of the 500-mile event on May 26. The Hendrick Motorsports driver will attempt to run two historic races on the same day, traveling from Indianapolis that afternoon to compete in NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway that evening.

RELATED: Scenes from Larson’s Phoenix test

This week’s test will mark the third on-track session for Larson in an IndyCar. He successfully completed rookie orientation at the Speedway last October, then participated in a test with his Arrow McLaren team at Phoenix Raceway in February.

“I’ve been excited about it since January of last year when we announced it, but yeah, I don’t get too overly excited about anything,” Larson said during last weekend’s NASCAR events at Martinsville Speedway. “Just take it every day, day by day. Hopefully, the weather is good next week, and we can get in the car as scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday and just get to learning, I think, from there. I think next week is when I’ll really get to learn more about things, racing and getting to be around my team of people. The other times I’ve been in the car, I haven’t had — and I don’t even know, maybe I have been around a lot of the team members, but I’ll at least have my team there next week to kind of talk to and learn from. And then yeah, as far as being at the track with teammates and all of that sort of stuff, it will be good.”

The track is scheduled to open Wednesday at 9:05 a.m. ET for a nearly two-hour session for veteran drivers, followed by a two-hour rookie orientation practice and refresher at 11 a.m. ET. The session is then open to all drivers from 1-6:30 p.m. ET Wednesday and again from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET Thursday. Admission is free, with infield access limited because of construction near the IMS Museum.

Larson enters this Sunday’s Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) having won the pole position in the last two Cup Series events. He has one victory (Las Vegas in March) through eight races this season and ranks second to Martin Truex Jr. in the points standings.

Posted on by Zack Albert

NASCAR’s top competition executive said Tuesday that work is ongoing to produce better short-track racing and that officials were working closely with Goodyear to find a suitable direction with the Cup Series’ tires.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, made the remarks during his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “Morning Drive” program and in the aftermath of Sunday’s Cup Series event at Martinsville Speedway.

RELATED: Cup Series schedule | Points standings

Sawyer contrasted Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville with the circuit’s most recent event March 17 at Bristol Motor Speedway, where accelerated tire wear produced an intriguing race that placed a premium on strategy and tire management. Tires have been in sharper focus in recent weeks, including the March 31 event at Richmond Raceway, where teams began the race with wet-weather tires that evening after a spike of afternoon showers.

“As far as the product on the race track, I think we can’t lose sight of the fact of what happened at Bristol a couple of weeks ago,” Sawyer told SiriusXM. “I think we’re not naive to this. We, as NASCAR, want our short-track package to be better. We want that racing to be at the level that superspeedways and our intermediate race tracks are today. I promise you, we are working as hard as we can with Goodyear and we need to work harder. That’s the bottom line. We need to work harder to come to a place where, as I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to figure out how to bottle up what we learned at Bristol and also what we learned the first 30 laps at Richmond last week on how that race unfolded.

“The tires, and the way they wear, and the way the drivers had to manage that tire wear and the tire fall-off is really what we’re trying to achieve. When you can go out on any track, especially short tracks, and you can run it 10-tenths, and the equipment will take it and the tire will take it, then you’re taking all the skillset away from the driver. So we are, I promise you and I promise our fans, that we are working daily to continue to try to come up with a tire that will give us the short-track racing that we’re all looking for.”

MORE: Martinsville race results

Competition officials introduced a new aerodynamics package for use at short tracks this season, one that relies on fewer strakes on the rear diffuser. Sawyer mentioned that aero has been an offseason focus and a work in progress with the Next Gen car’s short-track set-up, but that finding an ideal tire combination is now the greater point of emphasis.

“This car is in its third year, so a lot of work has been done on the aero side of the short track. And just to be perfectly honest, that doesn’t move the needle. It really doesn’t,” Sawyer said. “For whatever reason, it could be the speeds in the middle of a corner, there’s a multitude of things that would go into that. But the bottom line is it doesn’t move the needle, and the drivers will tell you that. So there’s no need for us to put a lot of energy toward that type of testing. It really comes down to us and Goodyear and getting to a level we felt like it at Bristol that we were really close.”

When asked about the potential for a bump in horsepower as a suggested solution or a trial balloon at the non-points NASCAR All-Star Race on May 19 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Sawyer noted that such an increase does not present an easy fix — pointing out the cost involved and the lure for prospective new manufacturers entering the sport.

“I think it’s been well-documented on the engine side of it of why that’s not a lever that we can pull instantly,” Sawyer said. “It’s just not, when you work through all the dynamics. And understand that’s, our fans and some sometimes even our folks within the industry will point to that, that’s just not a lever that is easily pulled, and we have the data right in front of us. I don’t want us to lose sight of the fact of what Bristol look like, and again, what the first 30 laps of Richmond looked like and why it looks the way it did it. We didn’t change the horsepower. The horsepower was exactly the same at those two events than we had this past weekend. So what we have to do is continue to work on the rubber that meets the asphalt.”

A run of intermediate-sized tracks are next up on the Cup Series schedule, starting with Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM) at Texas Motor Speedway. Sawyer said there are no plans to add any resin or traction compound to the 1.5-mile track’s surface to widen the racing grooves.

“We’ve had conversation with Goodyear, with our drivers and obviously with (Senior VP of Operations and Development) Steve Swift and the folks at (Speedway Motorsports) and collectively made a decision to not do any track treatment at Texas,” Sawyer said. “We’ll head out there and give all the teams that information so they can plan accordingly.”

Posted on by Zach Sturniolo

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Bubba Wallace has been no stranger to the front of the field this season, but his finishes haven’t often reflected that.

Wallace left nothing to worry about Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.

The No. 23 Toyota took the checkered flag fourth after remaining a mainstay at the front of the pack in Sunday’s Cook Out 400, offering to play spoiler in Hendrick Motorsports’ dominant (and prominent) weekend as it celebrated its 40th anniversary.

MORE: Byron’s victory leaves Hendrick team in ‘awe and shock’

Wallace didn’t mind breaking up the brigade to finish second in each of the opening stages and hung around the top five despite the Chevrolets’ charge to the front for a 1-2-3 Hendrick finish. His 23XI Racing Toyota faded to sixth on the penultimate run, but a late-race caution and Denny Hamlin’s decision to pit afforded Wallace fifth place on the overtime restart. Wallace capitalized and snagged a pass on longtime buddy Ryan Blaney to finish fourth, complementing his 3.79 average running position to score his first top-five finish since opening the season with two in a row.

“I appreciate everybody’s effort, you know?” Wallace told NASCAR.com. “Being able to close the deal out, it’s just — finally, right? It’s one of those moments where it’s like you can let out a big breath because we got the result that we deserved. I was content with finishing sixth there to end it, but you never give up on those restarts. So it’s actually nice to be able to fire off good and actually net positive.”

Evidenced by the loop data, Wallace was a frequent flyer inside the top five at the 0.526-mile oval Sunday. But the No. 23 car was too “swingy,” Wallace described on his radio.

“When you settle into this corner,” Wallace explained as he walked toward Turn 3, “the rear end wants to come around, so you can’t be aggressive. So it sounds like if you slow down to get it [the car] underneath you, that’s fine, but then somebody else can drive around you. So it’s just the little things. It doesn’t take much to put you in the game; it doesn’t take much to take you out of it.”

Bubba Wallace walks pit road at Martinsville Speedway.
James Thomas | NASCAR.com

There is a strong case to be made for this marking Wallace’s second straight top five had his Richmond Raceway finish not gone awry. Accidental contact from Wallace to Kyle Larson spun Larson with just two laps remaining in last weekend’s race to bring out the yellow flag. Larson recovered to finish inside the top five — third — but a slow pit stop plummeted Wallace to a 13th-place finish after running fifth at the time of the caution. The final rundown eliminated any proof of Wallace’s good day — a second-place Stage 1 finish, eighth-place in Stage 2 and an average running position of 5.74, fourth-best of the field that day.

There was no derailment at Martinsville, where Wallace has now finished 11th or better in each of his last four starts — including Sunday’s fourth-place finish, his first Martinsville top five.

“It’s just our first green race of the year, our first race with no mistakes,” crew chief Bootie Barker said. “That’s just what we’ve got to do. Speed’s there.”

Nothing about their team’s performance surprised Barker, who is in the midst of his 21st full-time NASCAR Cup Series season, per 23XI Racing’s website. The team advanced into the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Playoffs a season ago and went to Victory Lane in each of its first two seasons in 2021 and 2022.

“I mean, we should be good everywhere we go,” Barker said. “If you want to be elite, this is what you’ve got to do.”

RELATED: Go ‘Full Speed’ and learn more about Wallace

Wallace, Barker and Co. now have momentum heading back to Texas Motor Speedway, where Wallace led 111 laps in the Round of 12 opener in last year’s postseason before a late-race restart wound up with Wallace third. A win in that event would have propelled the No. 23 team into the Round of 8, but the group was ousted from the playoffs two weeks later instead.

So does Martinsville momentum matter to Wallace with a return trip to Fort Worth in store?

“It’s really good going into Texas — the race I still won’t go back and watch,” Wallace said. “Got some redemption to do.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

Rick Hendrick says he cherished watching from afar as his four ruby-red cars ran at the front of the pack in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. The enjoyment, however, took a plot-twisting turn when a late caution flag forced overtime.

William Byron emerged victorious from the final restart in Sunday’s Cook Out 400, the centerpiece race in Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary celebration. But Byron’s march to the checkered flag had its nervous moments for the 74-year-old team owner, watching from home as he continues his rehabilitation from recent knee-replacement surgery.

RELATED: Byron seals special win | Martinsville race results

Contact between Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet from Chase Elliott’s No. 9 Chevy with fellow teammate Kyle Larson’s No. 5 in close pursuit prompted a vocal reaction from Hendrick as he watched the broadcast. Having watched teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson famously come up empty in a 2012 restart at the 0.526-mile track, Hendrick said seeing such scenarios “always knots your tummy up.”

“I think I was yelling a little bit like, ‘Oh, don’t, don’t, no, no, no!'” Hendrick said in a Monday availability. “You’ve got to let ’em race, but man, all I could see was them wrecking and maybe taking Larson with them,  and then I’d be over — well, I couldn’t go over there today, but I’d be trying to settle everybody back down. I’m glad they played nice and raced each other clean.”

Hendrick Motorsports pulled out all the stops for its anniversary celebration at Martinsville, the site of the organization’s first victory with Geoff Bodine back in 1984. A crowd estimated at 1,500 Hendrick employees and their families watched from a hospitality area above Turn 2, and all four cars sported special commemorative paint schemes in a deep ruby red.

Hendrick, who was scheduled to be the honorary pace car driver for Sunday’s event, took in the race from home, just past the midpoint of a 6-8 week recovery period from a total replacement. He said he watched from home with his wife, daughter and grandchildren, plus Hendrick Companies president Marshall Carlson and Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith.

“It was such an unbelievable event, and I wanted to go in the worst kind of way,” Hendrick said. “It just didn’t work out. I hated it because it was such a big event, and then after we won, I really hated I wasn’t there.”

MORE: Hendrick Motorsports’ historic wins

Hendrick said his phone notifications “starting lighting up” in the moments after the checkered flag, with 240 text messages and 40-plus emails that he said are on his list to reply to. He said knee soreness has made sleeping difficult in recent days, so he awoke at nearly 2 a.m. Monday morning and started watching a replay of Sunday’s race.

He said he’s still coming to terms with Sunday’s victory and the 1-2-3 sweep of the podium.

“If you had one car that had a shot to win, you’d be really happy,” Hendrick said. “Man, it turns out we had multiple cars that could win the race. I’m still having a hard time believing it today. It was almost like divine intervention, just how in the world it all ended up like that on a day like that.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Jeff Gordon walked from the Turn 1 side of pit road on his way to the frontstretch Victory Lane set-up at Martinsville Speedway. Phone pressed to ear, the Hendrick Motorsports driver-turned-executive shared his post-race emotions with team owner Rick Hendrick on his way to congratulate a jubilant William Byron.

Forty years ago, Hendrick famously found out about his fledging team’s first NASCAR Cup Series win when pay phones were still a preferred method of communication and a call cost a dime. Flash forward to Sunday, and Gordon was transmitting text message updates, photos, and videos of the speedway’s scene, along with his joyous final reactions to Hendrick, in real-time.

The centerpiece race of Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary season lived up to its hype and promotion, with Byron collecting the organization’s 29th grandfather clock trophy. For the team that’s done virtually everything there is to do at one of NASCAR’s most storied venues, Sunday was a new one — a 1-2-3 finish by a single team for the first time in Martinsville’s 151-race Cup Series history.

The steady patter of texted updates halted in the late going, with Gordon not wanting to jinx the outcome or do much else other than hold his breath. No wonder the phone call to his boss and business partner after the checkered flag — full of background commotion on both ends — was so sweet.

“When I did talk to him, we just had a great moment of kind of in awe and shock,” Gordon said, noting the team founder’s remorse in missing the celebration in person owing to his recovery from recent knee surgery. “Even as much as he’s accomplished, this company has accomplished, when we do things like today, especially something that’s never done before, the 1-2-3 finish at Martinsville, he’s just so humble and appreciative. I love that about him.”

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Martinsville

A crowd that the team estimated at 1,500 Hendrick Motorsports employees and their families shared in the joy, watching from a hospitality perch above the track’s second turn as all four of the team’s specially designed ruby-red cars placed among the top 10 — with Byron leading runner-up Kyle Larson, third-place Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman in eighth. Like the Wizard of Oz slippers of the same color clicking together, there was no place like home.

The notion, though, that Sunday’s Cook Out 400 would be an automatic coronation for one of the four was no sure thing. The Hendrick Motorsports fleet struggled mightily here in last fall’s Cup Series Playoffs race, with only Larson mustering a top-10 result in sixth place. Both Elliott and Bowman were outside of the top 15, and Byron willed his way into last year’s championship round by gutting out a 13th-place day that left him winded and dehydrated after climbing out of his No. 24 Chevrolet.

“I was spent last fall. I think that brought a lot of anxiety and nightmares coming up here this time,” Byron said. “I think just coming up the road and thinking about what’s the progress we’ve made inside the car, we’ve been working on it non-stop to try to get my helmet and fan feeling better. Then I’ve been doing a lot of work in the offseason, working out, things of that nature. It all adds up. Our car, we had a really tough day in the fall. One of the worst experiences as a team, but one of the best experiences to realize the resilience that our team has. That showed today. …

“It’s really a 180. I think that fall race gave us a lot of fuel to be able to come back here and try to create another good memory.”

WATCH: Byron discusses mindset on winning at Martinsville

Byron’s Cup Series win total now stands at an unlucky 13. Triskaidekaphobia aside, the 26-year-old star has been a regular contributor of Hendrick’s most memorable recent milestones. Larson made the organization the winningest in NASCAR history with Hendrick Motorsports’ 269th at the 2021 Coca-Cola 600, but in the years since, Byron has provided his own cherished additions to the team’s growing museum collection.

Byron notched Hendrick’s 300th win last fall at Texas Motor Speedway, added the team’s ninth Daytona 500 triumph to kick off this season, then delivered in the capstone moment of the team’s anniversary commemoration.

“He’s got to do more of it lately,” Larson said with a grin, “but it’s just really cool when you can win milestone races for the company because I know Rick wants this place to go on at least for the next 40 years, so days like today or those milestones, they’re gonna mean something. They meant a lot then, but they’re going to mean even more down the road. So yeah, that history within Hendrick is special, and when you can do something like what William did today, it means a lot.”

SHOP: Buy William Byron winner gear

When Gordon scored his first Cup Series victory 30 years ago, Hendrick Motorsports’ win total had only reached a modest 35. That total has only multiplied in the years that have followed, but so has the organization’s size and scope.

The emotions are different now as a part of the organization’s front office, but Gordon said he still felt connected to the feelings of being in the car and the anticipation that a keepsake moment was approaching. Days like Sunday and those phone calls to remember have helped Gordon embrace the role “beyond what I could ever imagine and dream of,” he said.

“There’s just so many things wrapped up in the emotions of what today meant from just the time spent with Rick and Linda planning for 40th anniversary, talking about all of our drivers who have won, what Martinsville means to this company, planning this day, having all of our folks here,” Gordon said. “Then the day comes, the weekend comes, and you just go, ‘How in the world did it all happen like this?’ I mean, I know our folks are super-talented and they work really, really hard. Kind of glad we got beat kind of bad last year in the fall because I think that really made them go to work and get ready for this event.

“I don’t even know where to begin, honestly. There’s so many things that are special. Immediately looked up on the hill and saw all those ruby-red shirts just going nuts. Now they’re out there waiting to have a picture with our whole organization. You just cannot plan it any better, script it any better.”

Posted on by Brandon White

THOMPSON, Conn. — Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park has been the site of many milestones for Ron Silk on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.

From tallying his first three Tour victories at the Connecticut facility to surviving a crucial title tilt against rival Justin Bonsignore in October, Silk regularly rises to the occasion whenever the series visits the historic, 0.625-mile oval.

The status quo remained in place for Silk in Sunday’s IceBreaker 150. A dominant performance from the defending Modified Tour champion enabled him to secure his seventh Thompson victory and build some crucial early season momentum in the point standings.

RELATED: Complete Thompson race results

Once the green flag waved for the IceBreaker 150, Silk knew his silver No. 16 Modified could set a commanding pace as soon as he climbed from the fourth starting position.

“I was confident before the pit stop,” Silk said. “I had driven to the lead there and was able to drive away from everybody. This was a fantastic car from the start of the race, and I’m just pumped to be back in Victory Lane.”

The only setback Silk endured during his stalwart day at Thompson occurred while in the pits, as a slow stop caused him to lose the lead to fellow Modified Tour veteran Patrick Emerling.

It only took Silk one corner to re-assert control over the field. Using the bottom line on the restart, Silk muscled Emerling up the track and claimed the top spot, and he did not receive a significant challenge for the lead during the remaining laps.

Emerling, who settled for third, was not pleased with how the final restart played out. Not only did Emerling believe Silk was overly aggressive with his maneuver, but he maintained Silk should have been penalized for a premature launch.

“I kind of feel like Martin Truex Jr. the other day at Richmond,” Emerling said. “[Silk] jumped the start and then took us way up the hill. I’m just going to run him like that in the future, but I thought officiating would have caught that.”

Despite his frustrations, Emerling found solace in his second top-five performance of the season. After being eliminated in an early crash at Richmond the previous week, Emerling felt the IceBreaker 150 was more indicative of the speed prevalent in his first three starts with Rich Gautreau.

With the Thompson race reinforcing the optimism he already had in the program, Emerling believes he can keep tallying strong runs and make a charge for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour title.

“We had the car to beat today,” Emerling said. “It took us a little bit to get going, but we were the fastest car right at the end. Everyone did an awesome job. I did everything right, but I got beat by a jumped start. We’re coming, though.”

Just like at Thompson on Sunday, Silk will be standing in the way of a potential championship for Emerling and the rest of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour field. Aside from a sixth at Martinsville Speedway in November, Silk has not recorded a finish outside the top three in his last seven races.

Silk has every reason to believe he can defend his title after winning two of the first three events in 2024. For now, Silk is content with celebrating another milestone at Thompson with everyone at Haydt-Yannone Racing.

“[My confidence] is pretty high,” Silk said. “Richmond was a nail-biter, and we could be looking at three in a row. Should of, could of, would have, but we’ll go to the next one and try and get another one.”

In a repeat of the most recent Modified Tour event at Thompson, Jake Johnson placed second behind Silk, matching a career-best finish in the process. Emerling, Justin Bonsignore and Tyler Rypkema made up the rest of the top-five finishers.

Rounding out the top 10 were Craig Lutz, Austin Beers, Kyle Bonsignore, Matt Hirschman and Matt Swanson.

Following two consecutive weeks of on-track action, the Modified Tour gets a break before heading to Monadnock Speedway on May 4.

The Granite State Derby will make up the first leg of the Whelen Granite State Short Track Cup at Monadnock, with FloRacing set to provide live flag-to-flag coverage.

Posted on by Zach Sturniolo

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Chase Elliott turned in his best result of the season on a storybook afternoon for Hendrick Motorsports.

Elliott’s third-place effort in Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway highlighted a 1-2-3 effort for the organization as it celebrated its 40th anniversary in style. The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion, Elliott efforted his second consecutive top-five finish of the 2024 campaign and highest finish since finishing second at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in August 2023.

A winner of the sport’s Most Popular Driver Award for each of the last six seasons, Elliott is still in the midst of a 42-race winless streak. But his ruby-red No. 9 Chevrolet paced the field for a season-high 64 laps Sunday after qualifying third, marking the third time in the past four races Elliott has led multiple laps.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

“It was a solid day for us for sure,” Elliott said. “Nice to lead some laps. Certainly fell off a little more than I wanted to there at the end of those runs. Just struggled with traffic a little more than I should have. I thought our car was close. Pit stops were really good. Most of the restarts went well.”

The one Elliott was least satisfied with was the race’s final restart. Teammate William Byron was sailing toward Victory Lane with Elliott second and fellow Hendrick driver Kyle Larson in third. But John Hunter Nemechek’s brakes failed entering Turn 3 with just two laps to go in regulation, setting up an overtime refire with Byron on the inside of the front row and Elliott to his right.

“I had an OK jump. Just couldn’t make it stick there on the outside,” Elliott said. “Got into (Turn) 3 and tried to root him up off the bottom and went to get the power down to get up underneath him and I just couldn’t do it. And then I tried to run in really hard into (Turn) 1 and roll a little bit of a diamond and couldn’t make that stick either. So, at that point, I figured what was second or third? Who cares at that point? You try to go for the win or not.”

Instead, Byron stormed into Victory Lane to lead the 1-2-3 effort on a special day for Hendrick, which became the first organization to ever sweep the top three positions in a Cup Series race at Martinsville.

“Happy for William, happy for everybody at Hendrick Motorsports,” Elliott said. “Really special to have all of our folks here — there are a lot of them and their families. Hate Rick (Hendrick, car owner) couldn’t be here today and (Rick’s wife) Linda but certainly happy and proud to be a part of their organization and ultimately their family.”

Elliott’s No. 9 team has had plenty of speed to start the season but not always the results to show for it. Their average running position heading into Sunday’s race was the series’ fourth-best at 11.23, but that only equated to a 12.7 average finish. A fifth-place run at Richmond Raceway last weekend, followed by Sunday’s third-place effort, marks Elliott’s first string of consecutive top fives since a three-race stretch from Sonoma Raceway to the Chicago Street Course last summer.

“The pace has been good. I’ve been pleased with that,” crew chief Alan Gustafson told NASCAR.com. “The speed’s been in the cars. I feel like earlier in the year, we just weren’t getting the finishes indicative of the performance of the cars. Our average run position and our finish position was quite a bit different. Recently, I think we’ve certainly gotten better at finishing where I feel like we should. It’s never-ending, just keep trying to improve.”

Short tracks were a particular point of emphasis for Hendrick Motorsports heading into the past two weeks, Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels told NASCAR.com, a point echoed two weeks ago by Byron’s crew chief Rudy Fugle after the No. 24 team’s win at Circuit of The Americas. Those efforts bore fruit Sunday at Martinsville, with all four Hendrick cars finishing inside the top 10, with Alex Bowman bringing home an eighth-place finish.

“We made a big step, change, improvement here which I thought was good,” Gustafson said. “We worked hard this week in the lead-up to the week. I feel like really late in the week, we all kind of went a little different direction. That worked out good, so happy about that and happy with the way that everybody’s working together and the results show it.”

MORE: 2024 Cup Series schedule

A race-winning crew chief with Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Kyle Busch and Elliott — all current or future members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame — Gustafson has proven he can get the best out of his drivers. He also sees what Elliott continues to bring as he evolves with the Next Gen car, a vehicle Elliott wheeled to Victory Lane five times in 2022, its debut year.

“I feel like he always shows up,” Gustafson said. “Everybody does on our team. I don’t know that there’s been a thing drastically different. I just feel like we’re getting the results.”

The next goal, as always, is for the No. 9 team to get back to its winning ways. Elliott won two or more races in each year from 2018-2022 but remains winless since Talladega Superspeedway in October 2022. Teammate Byron, meanwhile, has won nine of the last 44 races and three of the first eight in 2024.

The first step toward Elliott earning that next checkered flag is running at the front of the field, which the No. 9 Chevy did plenty on Sunday.

“Just nice to have a solid day,” Elliott said. “William has been running really good, so just nice to be up there and be in the mix and feel like you got a shot. That’s encouraging and certainly a lot more fun.”

Posted on by Staff Report

Icebreaker 150

Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park

20141217085344 Thompson Speedway Logo

  • Race results:
Pos. Car No. Driver Sponsor Laps Diff.
1 16 Ron Silk Blue Mountain Machine/Future Homes 150  –
2 3 Jake Johnson Propane Plus/Lin’s Propane Trucks 150 2.169
3 1 Patrick Emerling Fleetworks Inc/LFR 150 4.846
4 51 Justin Bonsignore Coastal Fiber LLC 150 6.322
5 32 Tyler Rypkema Northern Drilling/Musco Lighting/Make-a-Wish 150 7.184
6 46 Craig Lutz Riverhead Building Supply 150 8.826
7 64 Austin Beers G&G Electrical Supply/Dell Electric 150 10.723
8 22 Kyle Bonsignore Munns Automotive/Chalew Performance 150 11.868
9 60 Matt Hirschman Elite 150 12.685
10 89 Matt Swanson Cervaolos Auto/Casella Snowplows/Mully’s Auto Repair 149 1 Lap
11 19 Anthony Sesely Franzosa Trucking Co/Karchner Warehousing 149 1 Lap
12 25 Brian Robie Maurice Enterprises 148 2 Laps
13 54 Tommy Catalano Catalano Motorsports/FX Caprara 148 2 Laps
14 18 Ken Heagy Buoy One Seafood & Restaurant 147 3 Laps
15 28 Mike Marshall MLM Diagnostics/Jusczak Electric 139 11 Laps
16 1 Melissa Fifield Pine Knoll Auto Sales 139 11 Laps
17 84 Tyler Catalano* Catalano Motorsports 113 37 Laps
18 2 J.R. Bertuccio Gershow Recycling 87 63 Laps
19 56 Trevor Catalano* Catalano Motorsports 27 123 Laps
20 4 Tim Connolly Connolly Companies, LLC 17 133 Laps
21 44 Bobby Santos Harshaw Paving/Olivas Market 1 149 Laps
22 24 Andrew Krause Supreme Manufacturing Co. 1 149 Laps
23 36 Dave Sapienza Sapienza Racing/Eastport Feeds 1 149 Laps
24 58 Eric Goodale GAF Roofing 1 149 Laps
Posted on by Reid Spencer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — William Byron has a penchant for milestones. Last year, Byron picked up the 300th NASCAR Cup Series victory for Hendrick Motorsports at Texas Motor Speedway.

In Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway, he got another.

In a race that went into NASCAR Overtime, Byron led an unprecedented 1-2-3 finish for owner Rick Hendrick at the 0.526-mile short track as the organization celebrated its 40th anniversary in NASCAR’s premier division.

In front of a throng of employees and supporters gathered in tents overlooking Turn 2, Hendrick became the only organization to sweep the podium positions in a Cup race at Martinsville. Byron’s victory was the 29th for Hendrick Motorsports at the track, the most for an organization at a single NASCAR venue.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos 

“Just so proud of everyone at Hendrick Motorsports,” Byron said. “Grew up a big Hendrick fan. To be here for the 40th anniversary, all that goes into just this organization, all the people, it’s all about the people. Just want to thank Mr. Hendrick and (wife) Linda and everyone involved.

“It’s pretty awesome. Badass to win at Martinsville. We’ve been struggling at the short tracks. Just kept inching up on it. I’ve got a great team. They just kept my head in it. It stunk to do a restart there at the end like that, but that’s the way it goes.”

An early green-flag pit stop proved the difference for the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet, who earned his third victory of the season, his second at Martinsville and the 13th of his Cup career.

With Denny Hamlin in the lead, crew chief Rudy Fugle called Byron to pit road on Lap 297 as the first of the lead-lap drivers to get fuel and fresh tires. Hendrick teammates Kyle Larson, the pole winner, and Chase Elliott followed a lap later.

The early stops allowed the Hendrick drivers to leap-frog Hamlin, who pitted on Lap 299 and could not advance past the fourth position before the caution for John Hunter Nemechek’s accident in Turn 4 on Lap 398 of 400 sent the event to overtime.

On Lap 310, Byron passed Elliott for the ninth position, and as the drivers ahead of him made pit stops, he worked his way forward, passing Daniel Suárez for the lead on Lap 327 before Suárez came to pit road.

Byron led the next 86 laps, and after Elliott was credited with leading Lap 413 at the overtime restart, Byron surged ahead for the final two circuits and crossed the finish line 0.550 seconds ahead of Larson.

SHOP: Buy William Byron winner gear

“Congrats to William,” said Larson, who won the first 80-lap stage wire-to-wire. “He did a really good job. Kind of schooled us all there after that green flag stop. Did a really good job passing all of us. He was able to set a good pace. Still get through traffic good.

“My car felt really good. I think we were all kind of the same speed, honestly. Just lost a little bit of track position there in the second stage. Was never able to overcome it.”

Byron held a lead of more than two seconds before the fifth and final caution of the race. On the overtime restart, he survived a bump from Elliott, who slipped to third behind Larson at the finish.

WATCH: Byron discusses memorable win for Hendrick | Larson on runner-up finish

Bubba Wallace ran fourth, followed by reigning series champion Ryan Blaney. Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, Ryan Preece and Chase Briscoe completed the top 10. Hamlin, who pitted for fresh tires before the overtime, restarted 10th and came home 11th.

“We were just trying to do anything we could to steal one with our Sport Clips Toyota,” Hamlin said. “The tires didn’t wear enough to matter. We saw that when Joey (Logano) stayed out on those 80-lap lefts and led most of the stage (Stage 2).

“Tires didn’t wear, and we just struggled to pass all day. Once I came out of that cycle, third or fourth, that’s kind of just where I stayed.”

Larson, who led 86 laps, took over the series lead by 14 points over Martin Truex Jr., who finished 18th on Sunday, and by 17 over Hamlin.

The only negative aspect of the Hendrick party was the absence of the team owner, who underwent knee replacement surgery and couldn’t attend. But NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon was there to serve as grand marshal and represent the organization.

“These guys, these three guys, as well as Bowman, they drove their butts off,” Gordon said. “How about that William Byron, the 24 car? Every time we have a milestone day or opportunity or moment, he steps up.

“He got number 300. This is going to be a huge win for him and the whole organization.”

MORE: 2024 Cup Series schedule | 2024 Cup Series standings

The Cup Series will next head to the Lone Star State to race at Texas Motor Speedway on April 14 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Martinsville garage concluded without issue, confirming Byron as the race winner.