Saturday's motors: Cup drivers seeking consistency from NASCAR in applying rules
More consistency.
That's what NASCAR Cup Series drivers want, not only from their pit crews and engineers but also from the governing body and how decisions are made in the race command center.
After NASCAR said Denny Hamlin jumped the overtime restart at Richmond Raceway last Sunday night and won the race, senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer acknowledged the early start and said had it been earlier, it would have been more closely scrutinized. Instead, there were only two quick laps and a pretty exciting finish.
“Obviously Denny took the liberties of going a little early there. And again, if it's lap 5, if it's lap 10, it's lap 50, if it's lap 350,” he said, NASCAR would have more time to assess whether any penalties should be handed out. “The last thing you want to do is get that call wrong.”
Hamlin said Saturday what he did was not unusual.
“It made no difference in the outcome. People would like to think that it changed the result, but it didn't,” he said.
“When I look back at it, I was not as close to the box as I thought I was.”
NASCAR tracks have a single line to start the restart zone and a double line to end it, and the race leader has the prerogative to be the first to get on the throttle and take off. Hamlin said he thought Martin Truex Jr., to his outside, was going faster, so he was protecting his advantage.
“He’s not the first person that’s ever taken off before the zone,” Kyle Larson said Saturday at Martinsville Speedway. “So it’s always been a game. And, I don’t know. I don’t really know how I necessarily view it. I can see all sides of it. You know, there’s lines on the racetrack. So you get, you know, those could be your lines that you have to go by. But then also I think, yeah, I mean, as a leader, you need to have, you know, full control of the lead.”
And perhaps, Kyle Busch said, NASCAR is loathe to wipe away a stirring finish.
“They are a lot more prone to let things go when it comes down to the end of the race. We look at bump and runs. We look at dumping runs, right? I mean, a guy flat blatantly takes out another guy and gets to score the win because they’re not going to strip that for rough driving or something else. So I feel like that’s kind of their mentality a little bit, of just not wanting to be involved in a finish that’s stripping a win,” the two-time series champion said.
Hendrick at 40
Hendrick Motorsports' yearlong celebration of its 40 years in NASCAR takes on special significance at Martinsville, where its 28 wins are the most for any team at any track. The first came in 1984 when team owner Rick Hendrick, who was considering abandoning the enterprise, was convinced by driver Geoff Bodine and crew chief Harry Hyde to enter.
Bodine won the race and HMS has gone on to become the best organization in NASCAR.
It's also the track where, 20 years ago, a plane carrying Hendrick's son and brother were among 10 killed when their plane crashed in fog on its way to the race. The race was won by Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson, but once news of the crash came, the postrace was very somber.
Larson, who won this race last year, said there's no additional pressure to win for him or other HMS drivers Chase Elliott, William Byron and Alex Bowman. They've all won at Martinsville.
“I wouldn’t say I feel any more pressure to win. And I don’t think probably any of us four drivers feel any more pressure to win, but we know the magnitude of a win this weekend would mean for the company,” he said.
Larson's Chevrolet has the name Linda Hendrick, the wife of the owner, above his passenger side door. Bodine and former HMS star Jeff Gordon, now involved with HMS management, will give the command to start engines. Rick Hendrick will not be there, having recently undergone knee replacement surgery. He was invited to drive the pace car in the prerace festivities.
Blaney's history
Defending series champion Ryan Blaney gained a spot in the championship four last year with his victory in the penultimate race of the year at Martinsville. He said he used to come watch his father race at the track, but that didn't mean he had it figured out when he started.
“The first couple of times I came here in a truck, I was really bad. The first couple of times in a Cup car, it was really bad and then it was like the fall race of 2017 when something just kinda clicked,” he said.
It still took him until 2023 to get that first victory.
Cup qualifying
Kyle Larson won the pole for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, turning a fast lap at 96.034 miles per hour to edge Bubba Wallace for the top spot by one one-thousandth of a second.
Wallace completed his best lap around the 0.526-mile oval at 96.029 mph. He and Larson were the only two drivers to exceed 96 mph in their qualifying laps.
Larson, the defending race winner, will lead a contingent of four Hendrick Motorsports cars in the race, which marks the first of the organization's 28 victories on the paper-clip shaped track 40 years ago. Teammate Chase Elliott will start third, Alex Bowman will start 10th and William Byron 18th. All four HMS drivers have won at least once on NASCAR's shortest oval.
The top 10 also includes points leader Martin Truex Jr. in fourth, Chase Briscoe and Joey Logano in the third row, Josh Berry and Denny Hamlin in the fourth and Ryan Blaney in ninth.
Blaney won the fall race on Oct. 29 and then won the season championship.
Xfinity Series
Aric Almirola grabbed the lead by going three-wide on the outside in a two-lap dash to the finish and won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday night.
Almirola, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, outran Sam Mayer and teammate Chandler Smith before a crash by Riley Herbst made the race official. Carson Kvapil was fourth in his Xfinity debut and Justin Allgaier was fifth in a race that featured 15 lead changes, eight different leaders and 11 cautions.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you coach, for calling me to give me this opportunity to come and have some fun. It still scratches the itch of racing but I get to spend a lot of time with my family,” Almirola said after climbing from his car. “I get so much pressure to win. I mean, I think everybody expected me to just get in and go win, but the reality is it’s really hard to jump in these cars and race against the guys that do it week in and week out.”
Almirola led six times for 148 laps in his fifth career victory in the series. He also won $100,000 as the top finisher among four drivers eligible for the Dash for Cash.
Mayer had the lead for the overtime restart with Almirola to his outside, and when Sheldon Creed tried to dive underneath Mayer, Almirola went to the outside and cleared both.
“On that restart, I knew it was going to be tough, but I was really thankful to be able to hold on,” Almirola said.
Mayer, who led twice for 11 laps, was not as thankful.
“Got one I feel like stolen from me there," he said. ”A tough deal but we’re going to move on to – I don’t even know where we are next week. Probably a good track for me so I ain’t worried about it. We’re going to go there and try to haul the mail there."
Smith started from the back after crashing in practice on Friday.
“Really proud of everybody in Joe Gibbs Racing. They took this car right here that I decided to wad up in the fence last night, took it back home to the race shop and worked til 2 o’clock morning, showed back up at five,” he said.