Martin Truex Jr. Wins a Marathon at Martinsville
Yesterday, two long rain delays pushed what was scheduled to be a night race at Martinsville out to the next day after just 42 laps. Today, an absurd TK cautions and a red flag pushed the final 460 laps of racing out to a length of over four hours. In that time, two drivers led a combined 433 laps. Neither would win.
Despite a few re-shuffles caused solely by caution timing, Ryan Blaney and Denny Hamlin were the clear class of the field throughout the race. Blaney won both stages, but Hamlin led a race-high 276 laps and was leading Blaney by a car-length in what looked like it would be the best battle of the day when the final caution of the race came out with 47 laps to go. The field stopped for their last set of tires, Blaney caught one of his crew's air guns while driving out, and he was penalized. His shot at a win was over.
With Blaney out of the picture, Hamlin suddenly found himself under pressure instead from his own teammate, Martin Truex Jr. He had been faster all day, but Truex had been in the top five most of the afternoon, and his car seemed to come to life in the closing laps. Hamlin got out to the lead on the restart that followed, and he defended well for the first 25 laps of the stint, but Truex got close with 25 to go and made his move to win with 15 to go. He never looked back, becoming the first two-time winner of the season.
Behind the race at the front, the headline of the day was what seemed like an unending series of crashes bringing out what seemed like an unending series of cautions. In total, over two days, the race was stopped fifteen times, mostly for single or two-car spins. One crash, however, collected no fewer than twelve cars.
Hold on to that thing @MartinTruex_Jr!
Wow! pic.twitter.com/B34RpW7t4E— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 11, 2021
The incident started when contact between Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher sent both sideways, but it escalated when the two spun in a manner that blocked the main racing lines around the track. The result was a pile-up, with cars pouring in for a few seconds and some being destroyed first by hitting the spun cars and then a second time by being hit by a car who could not avoid them. Clean-up took a full twenty minutes, and it wiped so much of the field out that only one caution followed in the final 110 laps.
Truex's win means that there are still seven winners in the series after eight races, slightly slowing the pace that would force a winner to be eliminated from their locked-in playoff spot but still well ahead of expectations. Despite that wide range of winners, Denny Hamlin remains the championship leader without a win of his own. If that somehow continued to the end of the regular season, he would still be guaranteed a playoff spot regardless of how many winners are granted one. In addition, Chase Elliott, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, and Kyle Busch stand out as drivers still expected to win a race this season. If all do so, that would account for 13 of 16 available playoff spots, all with two more restrictor plate races and five more races on road courses unaccounted for.
A short stretch of short track races continues next weekend at Richmond, a 3/4-mile, D-shaped oval that has as much in common with the smaller flat ovals on the schedule as it does with the shorter and tighter Martinsville.
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