Everything was on the line for the remaining Playoff contenders at Martinsville. In NASCAR, the entire season is determined by one race, so the most important thing is to make that race and qualify to contend for the championship. Under elimination pressure at Martinsville, a few Cup Series drivers shone to join past winners this round in the Championship 4 while the rest fell short.
Each driver’s performance at Martinsville is scored on a 1-to-10 scale, with a score of 1 reserved for a terrible performance with no redeeming qualities and 10 reserved for a perfect and dominating performance. Performance over the entire weekend is factored in, since qualifying results make race days easier or more difficult. This rating gives an indication of each driver’s relative performance throughout the Playoffs.
Martinsville was the final race of the Round of 8 and the second-to-last race of the season. The Championship 4 drivers will head to Phoenix Raceway where, next to the rest of the NASCAR field, they’ll fight among themselves for the season title.
9.5 – Ryan Blaney (1st)
Ryan Blaney continued to subvert expectations. Despite his Team Penske group struggling throughout the year, Blaney has had a strong Playoffs that he’s now capped off with two wins. And, like his win at Talladega, Blaney controlled the race at Martinsville. He led 145 laps en route to victory, and, despite starting well farther behind the leaders in eleventh, got up to second by Stage 1 and won Stage 2. Though a strong performance this round actually gave him a points advantage, Blaney’s win gives him strong momentum for the championship race.
“I thought we put together a really strong playoffs, especially the Round of 8. We had a good Round of 8, so just really proud of the whole effort,” Blaney said. It’s particularly special, he added, to finally win at the track at which he has the best average finish of any Cup Series driver: “It’s awesome. I grew up in High Point, not too far from here. High Point is closer to Martinsville than it is to Charlotte, so it’s really cool. I’ve been wanting to win here for a long time. We’ve been super close for many years and awesome to close it out.”
9 – Denny Hamlin (3rd)
Virginian Denny Hamlin had a very strong day in his home state, leading the most laps of anyone at Martinsville and winning Stage 1. He couldn’t hold onto the lead for good as a hard-charging Blaney snapped it up, but he continued to run up front. Unfortunately for Hamlin, finishing second in Stage 2 and third in the race still wasn’t enough: he’d entered the race with a 17-point deficit to make up after hitting the wall and failing to finish last week at Homestead-Miami, and ultimately ended up eliminated, eight points short.
“The mechanical failure last week with the power steering, that sealed our fate,” Hamlin, who is still yet to win his first championship, acknowledged. “I just want to get ready and go try to win next week. I still love it so much because every week I feel like I got a shot to win. That’s what fuels my passion, even at my age, to keep doing this, is I’m with the team that I got that gives me such fast cars every week and gives me a chance to continue to pile on those stats before the end of my career. It’s not over by any means. We got a long way to go.”
7.5 – Kyle Larson (6th)
Kyle Larson didn’t have to worry at Martinsville thanks to his win in the first race of the round at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but at least this time he managed to take the checkered flag. At Homestead-Miami Speedway, Larson crashed into sand barrels at the start of pit road during green flag pit stops, ending his day in a shower of sand after swerving to avoid Ryan Blaney who slowed more quickly on pit entry. Even the knowledge of advancing doesn’t make that much better. But at Martinsville, he qualified fifth and finished sixth: nothing stellar, but a lot better to see him off to Phoenix for the championship.
“I was glad we weren’t fighting for points, just because our car wasn’t that good so that would have been difficult to advance,” Larson admitted. “But our No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy team did the best we could out of the day. My team made some good strategy calls there in the final stage to get some track position and come away with the best finish possible.”
7.5 – Christopher Bell (7th)
Christopher Bell was already locked into the Championship 4 by virtue of his win at Homestead-Miami Speedway, so didn’t need anything special at Martinsville. And he didn’t get anything particularly special, just starting seventh, finishing sixth and tenth in the stages, and ending up seventh. All that really matters after getting the win this round is the all-important championship race, and all his attention has been on preparing for Phoenix.
“I don’t know – it was disappointing from my standpoint because I felt like I was going to be really good after yesterday’s practice, and it didn’t turn out, but seventh is a good finish and I’m excited about carrying the momentum into Phoenix,” Bell said. “We are going to have a rocket ship. I can’t wait to get out there.”
6.5 – Chris Buescher (8th)
After entering 43 points below the cutline, Chris Buescher needed a win at Martinsville. Unfortunately, he was never in contention for that at any point in the race after a poor start to the weekend. Buescher started deep in the field in 18th. Though he failed any stage points, that didn’t matter. What did matter was his finishing position: eighth, not enough. It concludes a disappointing round for Buescher: Martinsville was his first top-ten finish in the Round of 8. Still, it was a strong season for his Roush Fenway Keselowski team to pick up three wins and make a deep run in the Playoffs.
“It was a fantastic job all around,” Buescher said. “We needed a little bit more obviously to win this thing and move on. We knew that was going to be the case, but I’m extremely proud of our year all things considered. We knew coming into this that as long as I felt like I got out of the car and couldn’t walk anymore and nobody felt like we left anything on the table, then it’s all something to be proud of and I certainly am. It’s a bummer we don’t get to go to the next round, but we’ll take what we’ve done from this year, stack it up and hit the ground running for next season.”
6.5 – William Byron (13th)
William Byron made it a nail-biter. After winning more than any other driver this season, he struggled particularly badly at Martinsville, qualifying 16th and failing to break the top ten to score any stage points at all. Even entering with a 30-point advantage to the cutline, his poor performance put him at risk of elimination, particularly if Hamlin or Truex, who were below the cutline during the race, won. Fortunately for the No. 24 camp, they didn’t, and his 13th-place finish was enough to make the Championship 4 by just eight points.
“Yeah man, I feel terrible, but it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the result,” he said. “We dug deep. I’m just proud of my whole team. They stuck behind me and they gave me adjustments that I needed, and I’m just really proud of them. I wanted to make the Championship Four for them. Just drove the hell out of it for the last 30 laps. We were sliding all around, but that’s what it took.”
5 – Martin Truex Jr. (12th)
Martin Truex Jr.’s luck finally ran out in the Round of 8. During a remarkably poor Playoffs – with just one top-ten finish throughout – despite winning the regular season championship, Truex relied on those 15 bonus Playoff points to carry him through the rounds. But he just bled too many points this round to move on despite the advantage at the beginning as the competition heated up. A twelfth-place finish – just his second top-fifteen finish in the Playoffs, is made even more disappointing though since he started on the pole and led a total of 47 laps early before getting a speeding penalty.
“I think it just shows how tough this sport is. Anybody that races here and guys that have raced here that do the broadcasts, they’ll tell you. It’s this close, man. You find this little bit, and suddenly you look like a hero. Some other guys find some stuff, suddenly you’re not. We’ve been fast at times, but execution hasn’t been solid, hasn’t been consistent. We’ve had some bad luck. We’ve had a little bit of everything. Like I said, some years it feels like it’s your year, some years it feels like it’s not. I just feel we couldn’t do anything right,” Truex summed up his postseason.
2 – Tyler Reddick (26th)
Tyler Reddick knew that Martinsville was his one chance to battle for 23XI Racing’s first championship, but he wasn’t able to capitalize. Strong top-ten finishes in the first two races of the round, including finishing third at Homestead-Miami Speedway, put him in points position, entering just ten points below the cutline. But qualifying 19th put him on the back foot and he failed to secure any of the stage points he needed en route to a disappointing 26th-place finish.
“It was a tough day. We were having issues with voltage, and some of the cooling systems were cutting in and out. It got really, really hot – that is for sure, but it wasn’t going to waver my willingness to drive really, really hard there,” Reddick explained. “We really, really struggled with multiple issues in the corners – just made for a long day. Qualifying better was really important for us, but still – we took a few stabs at it to get some track position and our car just wasn’t doing the things we needed it to today.”
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