Following last weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series heads south to North Carolina for exciting action at the 0.94-mile Rockingham Speedway on Saturday (2:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
With the Cup Series having an off weekend, the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series will get additional time in the spotlight as the featured event Saturday afternoon at “The Rock.” Sammy Smith is the defending race winner. The contest will also serve as the qualifier race for this season’s Dash 4 Cash stretch, slated to begin on April 11 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Garrett Mitchell, also known as Cleetus McFarland, is set to make his O’Reilly Auto Parts Series debut, driving the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. McFarland made his debut in the Craftsman Truck Series earlier this year in the season opener at Daytona International Speedway.
After a week off, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to action at Rockingham Speedway on Friday (4:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 0.94-mile North Carolina track known as “The Rock” will host the fifth race of the 2026 Craftsman Truck Series season. In the four races, four different drivers have gone to Victory Lane — Chandler Smith at Daytona International Speedway, Kyle Busch at EchoPark Speedway, Layne Riggs at St. Petersburg and Corey Heim at Darlington Raceway. Rockingham will also be the second race of this year’s Triple Truck Challenge, with one more prize race set for April 10 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
After taking the first $50,000 prize in “The Trip” at Darlington, defending series champion Heim will get an opportunity to increase his total, driving the No. 1 Tricon Garage Toyota. Two-time NASCAR Local Racing Series champion Connor Hall is set for his first start in the Craftsman Truck Series this year in the No. 4 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet.
Despite the Cup Series not competing this weekend, Carson Hocevar will pilot the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet at “The Rock.”
The short-track bumps and bruises were plenty apparent this weekend at Martinsville Speedway, as was crisp speed and savvy strategy. When the Virginia dust settled, Chase Elliott not only clinched his first NASCAR Cup Series victory of 2026 (and for Hendrick Motorsports entirely), but also did so at the expense of Denny Hamlin, who dominated the day and led 292 laps only to finish runner-up.
Of course, Elliott and Hamlin weren’t the only drivers who had prosperous days; plenty did. On the flip side, several drivers will look to brush off the Virginia half-miler immediately. Here’s a glance at three drivers on the upswing and three more on the downturn following Martinsville and heading into the off-week before action begins once more on April 12 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
What happened: The difference one race makes. A 33rd-place finish at Darlington Raceway had the three-time Cup Series champion on the opposite end of this installment last week, but this time, Logano put those woes to bed with a strong showing at “The Paperclip.” The No. 22 Ford got stronger as the weekend went on, finishing Stages 1 and 2 in seventh and third, respectively, with P3 the final result when the checkered flag waved. The finish acted as the 14th-consecutive top 10 for Logano at Martinsville, tied for the third-longest streak in the track’s storied history.
What’s next: Though he has two career Cup wins there, Bristol has been tough sledding for Logano since the Next Gen era began in 2022, with five finishes outside the top 20. There is a glimmer of hope, though: The most recent race there (September 2025) resulted in fifth place.
Ethan Smith | For NASCAR Digital Media
2. William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Started: 2nd
Finished: 5th
What happened: Finishing worse than where you started shouldn’t be a knock on Byron. If anything, it should emphasize just how strong the cars ahead of him were because the No. 24 wheeled it. From top-10 practice times and a front-row starting position to top-five finishes in Stages 1 and 2, the No. 24 Chevrolet was in the mix from start to finish. Byron’s 47 Martinsville points accumulated ranked fourth overall, and his seven top fives at the track are his most at any facility.
What’s next: Though he has excelled at Martinsville, Bristol has been a different beast for Byron in his Cup career. The 28-year-old North Carolina native has two top fives and five top 10s with zero laps led and a 16.1 average finish at the track. Byron and the No. 24 camp will have work to do should the team wish to leave a winning mark at “The Last Great Colosseum” for the first time.
Ethan Smith | For NASCAR Digital Media
3. Shane van Gisbergen, No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet
Started: 5th
Finished: 11th
What happened: Road-course ringers have had a knack for Martinsville success, and for one still learning the oval ropes, the 36-year-old Kiwi had a respectable showing. Though his practice time ranked 34th, that proved to be the outlier. Van Gisbergen started inside the top five to begin the 400-lapper and maintained track position, finishing Stages 1 and 2 in sixth and eighth, respectively. Though he finished outside the top 10, the growth on these tracks is very noticeable, and that should only make van Gisbergen that much more of a threat in due time.
What’s next: Speaking of growth, it will be put to the test at Bristol. Van Gisbergen’s first Cup exposure there came during his 2025 rookie campaign, with him finishing outside the top 25 on both occasions. During the spring race, van Gisbergen completed only 208 laps before a suspension issue resulted in a DNF. The sample size is small, surely, but more seasoning is needed.
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THREE DOWN ⬇️
1. Bubba Wallace, No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota
Started: 15th
Finished: 36th
What happened: Wallace will want to wash this one. After top-20 track position through Stages 1 and 2, the No. 23 Toyota made contact with Carson Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet on Lap 324. A stack-up ahead of Hocevar resulted in Wallace hitting the No. 77 again, with the damage from the contact — in addition to other cars in the vicinity — enough to send Wallace to the garage for the duration. Wallace tallied one point from the race.
What’s next: With only one top five and two top 10s in 13 Bristol Cup races, Wallace could be in for another grind of a day. That said, nearly any performance will be an improvement after Martinsville’s one-point affair. The fact Wallace has led at least one lap in three of the last four Bristol contests suggests that a rebound could come in a semi-decent fashion.
Jacob Kupferman | Getty Images
2. Zane Smith, No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford
Started: 14th
Finished: 34th
What happened: All looked swell for Smith and the No. 38 camp through the opening two stages at Martinsville, with finishes of 14th and 17th, respectively. Any chance of maintaining top-20 track position was undone, however, on Lap 324 after the No. 38 Ford was involved in a late multicar crash, resulting in damage that required a garage visit. While Smith returned to on-track action, the damage was done, finishing the race 29 laps behind the top finishers.
What’s next: In four career Cup races at “The Last Great Colosseum,” Smith has failed to finish on the lead lap in three instances, including both the 2024 and 2025 spring races, with results of 36th and 27th, respectively. Last fall’s contest, however, was a breakthrough of sorts, finishing third and leading five laps. It might not be much, but it’s definitely something to build upon for this year’s spring running.
Jacob Kupferman | Getty Images
3. AJ Allmendinger, No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet
Started: 28th
Finished: 27th
What happened: While some road-course ringers have found success at Martinsville, Allmendinger hasn’t. That theme continued this weekend, with little speed to break free of middle-road track position. Since the Next Gen era began in 2022, Allmendinger has made seven Martinsville starts, all resulting in finishes between 23rd and 28th.
What’s next: Unfortunately for Allmendinger, Bristol hasn’t been much kinder. In 27 career Cup starts, the 44-year-old has three career top 10s with 78 laps led. He did start on the Bristol Cup pole last fall, only for a steering issue to result in a 36th-place DNF. That said, he started inside the top 10 (eighth) and finished ninth in last year’s spring race.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Ty Gibbs is off to a monster start in 2026.
Now in his fourth full-time NASCAR Cup Series season, Gibbs has rocketed to five straight finishes of sixth or better in his No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. The most recent of those tallies came with a fourth-place run in Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway.
The 23-year-old has had decent season starts in the past, including a four-race stretch in 2024 that totaled three top fives and four top 10s. But never has Gibbs begun a season this strong: The No. 54 car has finished fourth three times (COTA, Phoenix, Martinsville), fifth (Las Vegas) and sixth (Darlington) all in the past five weeks. This stretch ties Gibbs’ longest top-10 streak of his career.
Gibbs is still looking for that first Cup Series win, but the 2022 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion feels like he’s closer than ever.
“Obviously, we’re pretty close, but just need a little bit more,” Gibbs said. “I think if you keep playing up there, you’re gonna win eventually. So just keep to it and keep running good and go knock off that win and hopefully get a couple wins this year.”
Finishes will always be the most important metric, but a close second may be his average running position. At 12.98, Gibbs holds the eighth-best running position in the Cup Series after Sunday’s race in Martinsville. The season started with finishes of 23rd in the Daytona 500 and 37th (DNF, crash) at EchoPark Speedway. In each of the five races since, his average running position has ranked inside the top five, including a second-best 3.38 on Sunday. And with an eighth-best 45 stage points through six races, Gibbs sits sixth in points, 131 markers behind series leader Tyler Reddick.
“It’s a lot of consistency,” No. 54 crew chief Tyler Allen told NASCAR.com Sunday. “It’s been really fun to be running up inside the top five like that. And I think Ty has shown a lot of maturity, a lot of growth, taking care of tires and just being there at the end. So really excited for this team. I think we’re up to sixth in points, so we’ve had a really good run after a pretty rocky start to the year at the speedways. So everything’s going great, and we’re excited to carry the momentum into the off weekend and get back at it at Bristol, which is one of his better tracks.”
Ethan Smith | For NASCAR Digital Media
The offseason drew plenty of change for this group. Last year was Allen’s first atop the pit box, but there was a disjointed dynamic to the No. 54 team as then-competition director Chris Gabehart was assigned to call strategy for the team on race day in a de facto crew-chief role. With Allen holding the reins in full this season, results so far are showing significant improvement. It’s a small sample size, but Gibbs is on track for a 11.9 average finish in 2026 — an uptick that would obliterate his previous best of 17.4 set in 2024.
“We’re able to have hard discussions when we have to at the race track and really work through what the race car is doing,” Allen said. “His awareness of inputs and how that affects tires and tire wear and tire temperature is night-and-day better from what we had a year ago. So it’s a lot of areas I think that have improved, and the team getting an offseason to sort of make this our team and all of our tools and equipment and processes, I think it’s all adding up.”
Gibbs is doing what he can to contribute to the program, keeping himself fit for competition by cycling, as he regularly shows on his social-media platforms. That and his team’s internal changes are bearing fruit that may soon produce a trophy.
“Obviously, just changing some things up and adding some key players to the team has been really important,” Gibbs said. “And also just working hard on my end, doing a really good job with my nutritional side, my sleep and just everything, getting ready to be good at driving race cars.”
As Allen alluded, Bristol Motor Speedway is one of Gibbs’ best tracks on the circuit. His 440 laps led there are his most of any track by a long shot — his next best is 80 laps led at Charlotte Motor Speedway — and his four Bristol top 10s are his most anywhere. The upcoming Easter off weekend for the NASCAR Cup Series provides both a stoppage in momentum and a chance to evaluate any potential obstacles that lie ahead in Gibbs’ pursuit of his first Cup win.
“I think coming back from the offseason and having made a bunch of improvements, and then living the first few races, there’s always a couple more things you just want to work on, and the off week gives you the time to do that,” Allen said. “And then having the confidence that we’ve been running so well, everyone’s on board and everyone’s working hard, and I think that lends itself to more consistency.”
The NASCAR Cup Series returns to action at Bristol in the Food City 500 on Sunday, April 12 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.)
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Being a powerhouse NASCAR team has its advantages, but as Hendrick Motorsports has discovered in its 42 years of business, that perch comes with lofty and sometimes unrealistic expectations. Several other teams had gone through the first six races winless without so much as a ripple, but when Rick Hendrick’s four-car group has any sluggishness to its start, it’s more of a wave, complete with alarm bells sounding.
What’s wrong? Have they lost a step? Has the rest of the field caught up? The buzz had grown incrementally louder as the handful of losses began to mount.
As unusual as the mini-slump might have been, the place where the organization’s modest recent skid ended was no surprise. Martinsville Speedway has been there when Hendrick has needed it most, and the team’s senior-most driver and his trusted crew chief delivered in the clutch.
Chase Elliott provided an encouraging boost in Sunday’s Cook Out 400, denying a dominant Denny Hamlin and riding a gutsy Alan Gustafson strategy call to victory at one of NASCAR’s original tracks. The first win of the season for Elliott and Hendrick was also the first for Chevrolet after a six-race blanking, but far from the team’s first at the 0.526-mile track. As the Sunday sun began to set, a Martinsville deckhand wheeled yet another grandfather clock trophy up to the frontstretch stage, marking the organization’s record 31st Cup Series triumph here.
Tyler Reddick has rightfully claimed his share of the headlines this year with four early wins, which stoked a stretch of five victories for Toyota just six races into the 2026 campaign. But Hendrick’s reliability at tried-and-true Martinsville provided Elliott & Co. with something to savor for an extra week, with the Cup Series idle during the Easter holiday.
“It’s the little things, man. You kind of definitely learn to enjoy that stuff,” Elliott said after his 22nd career Cup win, his second at Martinsville. “Yeah, just nice to kind of get to end this first stretch of the season going into the off week with the win is really cool. I mean, I know we still have a lot of room for improvement, don’t get me wrong, but great way to kind of cap off this first stretch. A lot of good momentum for the whole organization, honestly, I think.”
Crucially, the No. 9 team snatched the day’s momentum away from Hamlin, who led 292 of the 400 laps and seemingly had his second win of the season in hand. With Elliott running ninth just behind the fray of front-runners, Gustafson called Elliott to the pits on Lap 261, opting to roughly split the final and longest stage of the race into thirds with a two-stop strategy while other teams planned to make just one stop if the race went green.
The short-pit gamble eventually gave Elliott the lead with fresher tires as the pit cycle played out, and when a caution period for debris slowed the action on Lap 312, Elliott stopped again with the rest of the field — this time in second place behind Hamlin – to offset his tire deficit.
“It’s a risky call because you know you’re going two laps down, and if the caution comes out and you’re the first guy to do it, you can ruin your whole day,” Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon told NASCAR.com. “But at the same time, when it works out, if you look at the math, it looks like a better strategy in general to do two stops. It’s just when you do it here, you lose two laps under that pit road. So, they did a similar thing to this in ’24 and it worked out in their favor on that day, too. So I think if you ask Alan, he’s gonna say it’s probably not as risky maybe as it looks, but obviously paid off big-time today, and I couldn’t be happier for it to pay off for them and make that call.
“You’ve got to take risk in life. You’ve got to take risk in racing. They did it today, and then Chase got it done when he got up front.”
Ethan Smith | NASCAR Digital Media
Indeed, Gustafson was asked, and his impressions mirrored Gordon’s. Mathematically, he said, the overall edge on tires favored making two stops, but the counterpoint was that such a strategy left the team vulnerable to the possibility of an ill-timed yellow flag.
“At the same time, you can’t sit on your hands and run 10th,” Gustafson said. “You’ve got to do something, right? I think that was the best shot.”
Elliott did the rest, and his post-race praise of Gustafson’s leadership spoke volumes. The pair form the longest-running driver/crew chief pairing in the Cup Series garage, and Gustafson has drawn the larger share of social-media flak when dry spells have arisen. Elliott said he thought little of it when the team’s strategy veered from the norm — “I’ve told him this throughout the course of the season, ‘Hey, look, whatever you want to do, rip it.'” His unwavering support of Gustafson’s efforts was rewarded.
“It’s a great call. Glad he picked up on that, saw that. I don’t think anybody else did,” Elliott said. “Goes to show that he’s pretty good at what he does, which I try to tell y’all that all the time. But he does a pretty good job. I’m happy to work with him. Appreciate his effort, hanging in there, to our whole team for doing that, too. I appreciate that out of all of ’em.”
Gordon has noticed that commitment, too, from two perspectives. As a driver, he teamed with Gustafson for 11 Cup Series wins during Gordon’s last five full-time seasons (2011-15). As a team executive, he’s witnessed Gustafson’s confidence atop the pit box, a trait that’s helped override some of the noise from his detractors.
“You’ve always seen this, right? Whether it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Chase Elliott, whoever is the popular driver in the series, there’s a lot of critics that want to sit on the sidelines and evaluate it,” Gordon said. “You cannot let that tear you apart. You got to keep strong on the inside and believe in yourself and believe in your team, all the things you’re doing. That’s what Alan and Chase fall back on.”
On the eve of Sunday’s race, Elliott had described the team’s season to date as “super up and down,” though he entered Martinsville a respectable fifth in the Cup Series standings — tops among the Hendrick brigade. That mark, however, came against the backdrop of Reddick’s early runaway, both in points and wins.
Hendrick Motorsports president Jeff Andrews admitted part of the struggle so far was in adapting to a new Chevrolet body, with tweaks to the durable Camaro’s aerodynamics that made their debut this season. Andrews said the adjustment period continues with “still a lot of work left to do,” but that Sunday’s showing delivered on some of the team’s promise.
“We’ve been locking arms,” Andrews said from Victory Lane. “Could not be more proud of the determination, the fight and the grit in Hendrick Motorsports. It’s what we do. This is where we belong, and this won’t be the last one this year.”
It also may not be the last for Elliott, who has scratched the win column in eight of the last nine years, but prevailed Sunday at the earliest point of the season in his Cup Series career. Those alarm bells now sound like the chimes of yet another grandfather clock.
“I mean, we feel like we’ve been close here for a long time, and I feel like if you keep kicking on the door long enough, it’s going to come down,” No. 9 jackman T.J. Semke told NASCAR.com, right after dousing himself with a water bottle to clear the champagne from his eyes. “Obviously, Alan made an awesome call. I felt like we executed on pit road, Chase laid it all out there, put it together, and when you do have days like that where everything’s clicking, sometimes you end up in Victory Lane.”
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Denny Hamlin dominated the day at Martinsville Speedway. But the winningest active driver at “The Paperclip” didn’t leave with his seventh grandfather clock.
Hamlin led a race-high 292 laps in Sunday’s Cook Out 400, but two late cautions took the lead away from the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, and Hamlin was never able to re-pass Chase Elliott, who drove away to his first win of 2026 while Hamlin finished second.
Hamlin radioed at Lap 356 of 400 that “I’ve got something going on with the rear of my car under braking.”
“It just felt different in the rear that run, so we’ll check it out,” Hamlin said. “But no excuses, we just got beat.”
Post-race debrief for the No. 11 team confirmed Hamlin’s suspicions.
“It looks like we had an issue with the left-rear wheel being a tiny bit loose — loose enough he probably could tell,” Gayle said. “There’s some fraying on the pins and some wear there, so it was definitely loose.”
Until that point, Hamlin was seemingly untouchable. William Byron worked past Hamlin for the race lead in lapped traffic at Lap 39, but six laps later, Hamlin drove right back by the No. 24 car. But track position, Hamlin said, ultimately proved too much to overcome, particularly battling instability in the rear of his car.
“It’s just the ability to have the cleaner air for the longer period of time made me heat my stuff up, which is what I did to 35 other guys for the bulk of the race,” Hamlin said. “So it just, once you run that dirty air for extended period of time, the car typically goes away.”
While dirty air was a factor, so too was added Goodyear rubber that was run into the asphalt throughout 400 grueling laps of competition around the 0.526-mile short track.
“We were a little tighter late as rubber got laid down,” Gayle said. “It was a little worse for us, harder for us to kind of get back through there as well. To be fair, Stage 1, you might hit it right off the truck. And then you start the race after everybody’s had three, four or five pit stops, everybody tightens up a little bit more, right? And so I think there’s a little bit of both of that going on.”
While disappointed to walk away without its second win of 2026, the No. 11 team was able to take solace in the new Chase format. Wins are no longer guaranteed tickets to a postseason run. Instead, the 16 highest point totals propel teams into the 10-race championship hunt.
Zach Sturniolo | NASCAR Digital Media
But when a team has a car as dominant as Hamlin’s was Sunday, leaving Martinsville with anything but a grandfather clock is sure to sting.
“It’s just a gut punch to lead that many laps and not win the race,” Gayle said. “But that’s not really fair, right? If you do that consistently enough, you’ll win your share of them, and that’s about all you can control. I mean, it looked like we were having some issues on restarts, too, that Denny talked about a little bit. I think that was a choice with an engine setting that we ran that may have caused some problems and made it harder, so we could have helped ourselves there, too.”
The day wasn’t completely without controversy for Hamlin. In a battle for third with Ryan Blaney, Hamlin washed up off Turn 4 and ultimately ran Blaney into the outside wall.
“I got ran in the fence,” Blaney told NASCAR.com. “That was my perspective.”
Blaney, who ran inside the top five much on Sunday’s race, radioed the “toe’s knocked out of it” after the impact.
“I lost control off Turn 4, spun the rears and just got higher than I wanted to,” Hamlin explained.
Hamlin told MRN Radio he needed to go talk with Blaney about the incident to apologize. Blaney ultimately finished sixth but felt he could have fought for the victory if not for that run-in.
“It’s definitely unfortunate what happened,” Blaney said. “I don’t really think I deserved what happened. It was the first time we were around each other all day, so I’m pretty curious of why I got stuffed in there like that. But yeah, I mean, disappointing to not run better than what we did. But on the other side, proud of the day that we had and thought we could contend for the win, and that kind of took us out. But overall, proud of the effort and pace and just didn’t really work out.”
Told that Blaney thought the incident was unnecessary, Hamlin said: “I wouldn’t disagree.”
The series is off for Easter weekend but will return at Bristol Motor Speedway with the Food City 500 on Sunday, April 12 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
On a Lap 324 restart during Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway, Bubba Wallace and Carson Hocevar collided in Turns 3 and 4, sparking a multicar incident.
Entering Turn 3, the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota rammed the backside of Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. While the initial contact didn’t send Hocevar around, a stack-up ahead of Hocevar resulted in Wallace hitting the No. 77 again and eventually sending Hocevar around. Hocevar’s spin resulted in a multicar crash involving a handful of drivers.
Twelve cars were listed in the incident, including Zane Smith, Chris Buescher, Connor Zilisch and both Legacy Motor Club Toyotas of John Hunter Nemechek and Erik Jones.
Hocevar continued in the race on the lead lap, while Wallace’s day ended early.
Hocevar placed 17th when the checkered flag waved, while Wallace was credited with a season-worst 36th-place result.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Good pit strategy and a highly-motivated team rallied Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott to the NASCAR Cup Series victory Sunday in the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway; the sport’s reigning Most Popular Driver delivering Chevrolet its first win of the season, all to the delight of a huge, enthusiastic crowd at the historic half-miler.
Elliott short-pitted on lap 261 to gain track position, then moved his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet into the lead for good after a restart with 68 laps remaining — ultimately out-running the day’s most dominant driver, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin to the checkered flag by 0.565 seconds to extend the Hendrick team’s track record win total to 31 victories.
“It was definitely a team effort, how about that, that was awesome,” said Elliott, the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion, who made his very first Cup Series start at Martinsville exactly 11 years ago to the day.
“We’ve never had a win this early in the season. Just a really great team effort. So proud of [crew chief] Alan [Gustafson], the crew really did a great job. We took a gamble and were going to two-stop that last stage, and honestly believe it was going to work out either way. Just so proud. Sure is a lot of fun when days like this work out.”
Elliott, 30, of Dawsonville, Georgia, said he had been confident in the car’s speed all weekend and on Sunday, just needed that clutch pit call to get up front and seize the chance.
“This whole deal is really weird the way it works,” said Elliott, who now has 22 career wins. “Fortunately got that lead on the last one [restart] and fell into a good pace. Just had enough.
“Probably needed a little bit to be just the absolute best outright, but we were really close and were able to manage and save enough to get through traffic at the end.
“But man, it’s really cool when this stuff works out. To win these races is just so tough. Really grateful for the opportunity as always. I never take it for granted.”
Hamlin’s No. 11 JGR Toyota led a race-best 292 of the 400 laps and, for much of the afternoon, looked to absolutely run away with his seventh grandfather clock trophy. But after Elliott got out front, Hamlin was playing catch-up and never really was able to get close enough to attempt a pass in the closing laps as the leaders navigated lapped traffic.
“He did a good job controlling the pace there,” said Hamlin, who won both stages and was actually leading by three-seconds at the point Elliott made that all-important short pit stop to get up to the front.
“Just really came from that bad restart — just not much more that I could have done there. I felt like we gave it our all.”
This year’s Las Vegas Motor Speedway spring winner, Hamlin said he was also concerned in the final laps that perhaps the car had a loose wheel on the final run, but said either way, “there are some races that get away from you in your career, and this was certainly one of them.”
Team Penske’s Joey Logano rebounded from a rough 33rd-place outing last week at Darlington Raceway to finish third Sunday — equaling his best showing of the season in the No. 22 Ford.
“Weekends like last weekend, you start to question everything, you have to right, as a competitor you have to do that, but nice to have a good rebound, solid car,” the three-time series champion Logano said. “Our car, honestly, if we were able to get to the lead, I don’t know that the 9-car [Elliott] was any better than us, he just got the clean air at the right time. Proud of this team.”
Fourth-place finisher Ty Gibbs earned his fifth consecutive top-six of the season in the No. 54 JGR Toyota and the fourth top-five in the last five races. It marks his first top-10 at Martinsville.
Hendrick Motorsports William Byron — a three-time Martinsville winner — was fifth after leading six laps in the No. 24 Chevrolet. Penske’s Ryan Blaney, JGR’s Christopher Bell, Penske’s Austin Cindric, Hendrick’s Kyle Larson and Wood Brothers’ Josh Berry rounded out the top-10.
Tyler Reddick, the season’s four-time race winner, finished 15th but still holds a massive 82-point advantage over Blaney and is 94 points ahead of Hamlin atop the Cup Series standings. Reddick’s 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace, who finished 36th after triggering a 12-car accident on lap 325, dropped from third place to 11th in the standings.
The Cup Series takes the first of the season’s two off-weeks next weekend before resuming competition April 12 in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Larson is the defending Bristol Spring race winner.
Hamlin continued his short-track mastery, leading the entire stage and making it known that the race win will have to go through him.
The Toyotas as a whole started to move forward with Hamlin’s JGR teammate Gibbs following the No. 11’s tire tracks and placing second in the middle frame.
The Team Penske trio also started flexing over the long run, with Logano, Blaney and Cindric settling into the top six.
William Byron was the highest-placed Chevrolet in fifth.
Reddick, Shane van Gisbergen, Larson and Berry took the remaining stage points.
After a fairly clean opening stage, the middle portion opened Pandora’s box slightly in terms of tire strategy after Noah Gragson was spun due to early contact in the stage and several cars in mid-pack opted for new tires, highlighted by defending series champion Larson, who was running 15th when the caution came out.
Hamlin won the opening frame of Sunday’s 400-lapper around the historic Martinsville Speedway.
Hamlin took command, leading the opening 38 laps from pole until he caught lapped traffic and lost the lead to Byron for a handful of laps. He retook it six laps later and won Stage 1 under caution after Cody Ware spun on Lap 78.
The six-time Martinsville winner won his ninth stage at “The Paperclip.” Byron, Berry, Gibbs and Cindric rounded out the top five.
Van Gisbergen, Logano, Blaney, Reddick and Ryan Preece completed the top 10 to earn stage points.
Brad Keselowski rolled off 23rd and charged all the way up to 16th in the first stint of Sunday’s contest as he looks to join Richard Petty as the only drivers to win in their 600th Cup start.
Note: Post-race technical inspection concluded in the Cup Series garage without issue, confirming Elliott as the race winner.
The NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series head to Martinsville Speedway for the first of two trips to the Virginia short track in 2026. Bookmark this page and come back often for your race-week essentials — from links to qualifying order, average practice speeds, results and more.
Race day: Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.
Tires: Ten sets for the weekend (eight new race sets, one set transferred from qualifying, one for practice). Teams will also be allotted four wet-weather sets, if necessary.
Race day: Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on The CW. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.
Tires: Five sets for the weekend (three new race sets, one set transferred from qualifying, one for practice). Teams will also be allotted three wet-weather sets, if necessary.
With the drop of the green flag Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, Brad Keselowski eclipsed 600 career NASCAR Cup Series starts, becoming just the 35th driver to reach that historic threshold.
“I just wanted to have a career and was trying to prove myself,” Keselowski said in a team release. “To think that I’ve had another 599 since then is pretty cool. I just want to sit down with a 24-year-old me and tell him that was going to happen.
“When I first got in a Cup [car], I just wanted to be here. I didn’t think about anything outside of that,” he added. “I didn’t think of the stats. I didn’t think about the accolades. I just wanted to be here, and I’m lucky to be here.”
From Rochester Hills, Michigan, Keselowski made his first NASCAR start in 2004, driving for his father, Bob, in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He debuted in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series in 2006 before making his Cup Series debut for Hendrick Motorsports in 2008. A year later, driving a part-time Cup schedule for multiple teams, Keselowski won his first premier-series race at Talladega Superspeedway, coming in a James Finch-owned Chevrolet.
His Cup Series career officially took off in 2010, when he moved to Team Penske’s No. 12 Dodge entry for the full campaign. While he went winless and missed The Chase, he put together a stellar O’Reilly Series season in the team’s No. 22 entry, winning the series championship.
In 2011, Keselowski turned into one of the Cup Series’ elite young drivers. Switching to the No. 2 entry, he won three times and finished fifth in points. A year later, he reached the sport’s pinnacle, earning his first and only series championship, highlighted by five victories and remarkable consistency through the 10-race Chase.
Keselowski drove for Roger Penske through the 2021 season. He earned 34 victories for the organization and banked nine top-10 finishes in points, including a runner-up in 2020.
“I was really blessed to have the opportunity to drive for Roger Penske, a great chapter in my career,” Keselowski said in a media teleconference earlier this season. “We did a lot of really cool things together. Winning the championships in both the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the Cup Series was just highlights of my career. I look back really fondly on most of it.”
Entering his age-38 season, Keselowski took a leap of faith. He bought an ownership stake in what’s now RFK Racing and switched to the team’s No. 6 Ford starting with the 2022 season. Keselowski finished 24th in his debut season, but made the playoffs in a 2023 season highlighted by Chris Buescher’s three victories in the team’s No. 17 entry. A year later, Keselowski won at Darlington Raceway for his first victory as both driver and owner.
Keselowski got off to a difficult start in 2025 as RFK expanded to three full-time cars with Ryan Preece joining the fold in the No. 60 Ford. All three drivers missed the playoffs, but Keselowski showed signs of life in the back half of the campaign with a trio of runner-up finishes.
But entering 2026, Keselowski faced arguably his greatest challenge yet.
During the offseason, the future Hall of Famer fell and broke his femur during a vacation with his family. He was rushed into surgery, and later admitted he wasn’t sure if he’d ever walk again. But through consistent winter rehab, Keselowski climbed back into his No. 6 Ford just in time for the Daytona 500, finishing fifth.
Through six races, he’s finished no worse than 20th and enters Martinsville ninth in points after leading 142 laps and coming home second at Darlington.
“Driving the race car is a blessing and a curse,” Keselowski said. “It’s a blessing because it provides the motivation for me to really push my rehab and do things faster than normal, which is not a bad thing. But it’s a curse because, yes, when I get in the car, it does hurt, it does pull me backward.”
While Keselowski is one of NASCAR’s elder statesmen, he feels the end of his Cup career is nowhere in sight, with at least 800 starts in mind.
