As NASCAR’s oldest track, Martinsville Speedway presents a timeless challenge. Fitting for the track that presents its winners a grandfather clock.
Its drag-strip straights connected by abrupt, flat U-turns on either end create its iconic paperclip shape, a layout accentuated by a winding pit road.
Some drivers naturally find success in Martinsville’s tight confines. But others, well, they need a minute to feel around in the dark to find the light switch.
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Take Ryan Blaney, for example.
Heading into Sunday’s Cook Out 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion is easily considered a favorite to win again at Martinsville. But once upon a time, it wasn’t hard to consider him an also-ran there.
The sample size was small for Blaney back in 2017, his second full-time season at the Cup level. He was steady in five NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series starts from 2012 through 2014, with three fifth-place efforts and an eighth-place finish in that span. But his first three Cup starts there were forgettable, finishing 19th twice in 2016 and 25th in the 2017 spring race.
That all changed in October 2017.
“Fall 2017, it really clicked for me of, hey, here’s what I need to have the car feel like, and here’s how I need to drive it,” Blaney told NASCAR.com. “And I can’t say it was really anything specific. It’s just that we had a good race there, and it’s like, ‘Oh!’ Like a light switch all of a sudden. And, you know, fortunately, it’s transferred to the current car as well.”
Boy, has it. After those three throwaway starts, it now seems Blaney is inevitable every time the series heads to Martinsville: In 17 starts since the 2017 fall race, Blaney has two wins to bolster an astonishing 11 top fives and 13 top 10s. He has finished worse than eighth only four times in that span.
What changed between April 2 and Oct. 29, 2017? As always, the details are in the data. Then driving for Team Penske affiliate Wood Brothers Racing and its No. 21 Ford, Blaney leaned on quasi-teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano for feedback and input, with the added benefit of having their in-car data available to him before that information became public in the garage in 2019. He also studied film to analyze who did what well around the 0.526-mile short track, particularly six-time Martinsville winner Denny Hamlin and two-time winner Kyle Busch.
“Those four guys, especially around that time — like ’16, ’17 — I really studied those guys a lot,” Blaney said. “And for me, just being able to talk to Joey and Brad, who were teammates at the time, like, picking their brains about how do they approach or see these certain things and moments in corners really helped me out. And then you can apply it, and you hope that it works, you know? So I’d say those three or four guys I really watched and tried to learn from more than others.”
William Byron has a shockingly similar stat line to Blaney’s, down to the crummy first three starts — 20th, 39th (DNF, crash), 22nd — and only four finishes worse than eighth since. So it’s only fitting that last year’s penultimate race came down to a thrilling battle between Blaney’s No. 12 Team Penske Ford and Byron’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, with Byron getting the upper hand and earning his third Martinsville victory.
Now boasting a total of three wins, six top fives and nine top 10s in 16 starts, Byron had strong results at the short oval before breaking through for his first win there in the spring of 2022 — including a runner-up performance in 2019. But it wasn’t until that victory that he found what he was looking for.
“We had been pretty good there, but not great. There was always that little bit missing,” Byron said. “And I feel like there was just the last little bit of getting through the corner that I needed to understand. And I feel like when I understood how to make that part of the corner work, I feel like everything started to flow and I had more pace and just could take care of the tires better. So I would say it takes a good car, but it takes that feel and what you’re looking for to put it all together.”
Unlike Blaney, though, Byron said he didn’t lean on his teammates to figure out what was missing. That had to be found behind the wheel.
“I feel like I just kind of figured that out myself,” Byron said. “I had some advice from different people. … I think it kind of took a few races, and then it took my own learning to figure it out.”
In contrast to his younger counterparts, Denny Hamlin never quite had that light-switch moment. Instead, his background competing on short tracks around the Southeast prepared him for one of the Cup Series’ most unique challenges by the time he arrived for his first start in October 2005.
“It really started in late models,” Hamlin told NASCAR.com. “I had gotten to participate in the big late model race there for quite a few years before I got to the Cup Series. So if anything, it was one of the more easier tracks for me to adapt to. Speeds weren’t all that much different. Like, every other Cup Series track that I went to for the first time, it was like a late learning experience. And there, it was like my let-off points are similar, how you get back on the throttle was similar, how you roll the corner was similar. So I was able to adapt to it pretty early, just because of the short-track experience.”
What’s more fascinating is the prolonged success all three have found. All three had already proven themselves as Martinsville contenders long before the Cup Series shifted from team-built stock cars through 2021 and introduced the Next Gen vehicle in 2022, a radically different ride than what they had grown up racing.
But the success kept pouring in. Blaney and Byron each earned all of their Martinsville wins in the Next Gen car, and Hamlin enters Sunday’s Cook Out 400 as the event’s defending winner, with top fives in five of his last seven Martinsville starts.
“It is different, and how you make speed at Martinsville has changed with shifting, tires and the car,” Hamlin said. “But the general premise of what you need is the same.”
The driver has never been busier at Martinsville, shifting four times per lap through upshifts and downshifts while trying to nail braking points lap after lap — 400 times in the spring, 500 times in the fall.
The greats, though, know how to handle those stressors nearly unconsciously.
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“It’s a lot of stuff going on in there, for sure,” Blaney said. “But at those places like Bristol and Martinsville, the shorter places like that, you just get into this trance of doing it to where you’re not really thinking about it. But then you’re constantly having to adjust as the run goes on. So I feel like if you could just get into that rhythm zone quickly …
“And yeah, it’s pretty crazy that the old car drives completely different than this one with downshifts, brakes and roll speed, stuff like that. But the feel itself — like, this is how I feel like I have to roll through the corner (and) enter this certain way — that stuff kind of translates.”
This week’s race will present its own challenges. NASCAR arrives at Martinsville with 750 horsepower under the hood for the first time in the Next Gen era — an 80-horsepower increase from years past — with a simpler diffuser underneath, helping reduce the aerodynamic impact. There may be some unanswered questions, but Blaney, Byron and Hamlin surely know the feel they will need to earn another grandfather clock on Sunday.
