Yahoo Autos Not Even NASCAR Can Change What Martinsville Is
NASCAR Cup Series - Martinsville Speedway
Saturday, April 10th - 7:30 p.m. ET - FOX Sports 1 - Streaming On FOX Apps
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series calendar is highlighted by change. The sanctioning body's swing-for-the-fences attempt to create exciting racing at every track with a counter-intuitive high downforce, low horsepower strategy has failed to live up to their expectations, so stock car racing's highest level has pivoted the other way by seeking out excitement wherever possible with new races on road courses and even a dirt track. It is the culmination of a decade and a half of searching for answers, an increasingly desperate attempt to make NASCAR more exciting that has now snowballed to include double file restarts, pre-determined restarts after set in-race "stages" that pay separate points, and a championship format that guarantees the best-finishing of four drivers will be crowned champion after the season's final race.
In the past decade, the hunt for something better has gone hand in hand with audience decline as one of NASCAR's two defining stories. The changes series organizers have made seep into every race, altering both what drivers are aiming for on any given weekend and what viewers are asked to look for during an event. All of this means that the series has never looked less like itself. For a series that prides itself on continuity to a history of moonshiners driving through back roads in the south, this is a problem.
Martinsville is the only solution.
Most NASCAR races are unlike anything happening at a local level anywhere in the country. There is no local series running full-power stock cars on the intermediate ovals at Texas or Charlotte, no full-time tour of pack racing around Daytona and Talladega, and even the 1-mile ovals at Phoenix and New Hampshire only see local cars race on special occasions. Only the three short tracks reflect grassroots racing. Of those, Bristol and Richmond's unique, fast layouts actually make them standouts in the class of short tracks. Martinsville, a flat half-mile, is no standout at all.
This is what makes it special. Whether or not the dimensions are identical, Martinsville reflects the spirit of dozens, maybe even hundreds, of flat short tracks around the country. Tonight's race may have higher budgets and stakes than any local late model show, but the simple concept of large V8s powering fiberglass cars around a flat, short oval that is too narrow for its own good shares an obvious connection that makes sitting through stage breaks, ill-advised restarts, and overtime finishes worth it.
For just two weekends a year, Martinsville taps into something so simple that even the category's seemingly-annual competition package changes have yet to create untenable racing. Here, the most famous racing series in the US still has not found a way to get away from being what it has always been. Sure, Martinsville is not perfect, but it is something almost unimpeachable. The appeal is simply many fast, heavy cars going through a very small oval at surprisingly high speeds, just as it has always been. NASCAR may still need a new way forward, but this track will not. So long as the cars are large and fast and the track is narrow and slow, the spirt of Martinsville will persist.
That is what makes it one of the best tracks NASCAR visits. If you have any fondness for stock car racing at all, tonight's race is worth your time.
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