A wild ride at Talladega ended in a Chase Briscoe victory in daring fashion, slicing around the outside of teammate Bubba Wallace to claim his spot in the championship race at Phoenix where he joins teammate Denny Hamlin.
Now, the brightest stars of the NASCAR Cup Series descend into the Appalachian Mountains to pay a visit to one of NASCAR’s most-tenured and most-storied facilities: Martinsville Speedway.
The track’s long straights allow drivers to pick up a fair amount of speed before jumping on the binders for some of the tightest turns in oval racing, dropping down about 55mph in the corners before rocketing back up the straightaway.
Like most races on the NASCAR calendar, contact is encouraged at the track fondly called “The Paperclip”; in fact, I’d even call it a necessity in some cases as drivers fight for room around this half-mile circuit.
Six drivers enter today’s race with a chance to tie up the final two spots in the season finale next week in Phoenix.
Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell find themselves to be the only two drivers that can make it in on points, sitting well above their closest competitors under the cutline. To make matters more interesting, these two dirt racers wound up in a virtual gridlock as a result of Larson running out of fuel at Talladega, meaning they might fight each other directly for a shot at the Bill France Cup.
Pole sitter William Byron possesses an outside shot at claiming one of the final spots on points, but his best bet resides within his race car as his No. 24 Cincinnati Chevy laid down an immaculate lap in qualifying. With no one ahead of him to start the race, the back-to-back Daytona 500 winner has the best seat in the house.
On the outside of row 2, defending series champ Joey Logano wants nothing more than to crash the party, but his time’s running out on a title defense. Perhaps he’ll buy himself more time by earning a grandfather clock today for the second time in his career.
Two cars behind Logano in the outside lane sits Chase Elliott. Winner at Atlanta and Kansas, a half-mile short track may not be the best venue for Elliott and the 9 team to advance, but they snatched a win here in 2020 that propelled them to their first title. Maybe, just maybe, Chase can replicate that performance this evening.
Finally, there’s Ryan Blaney. The 2023 series champion solidified his title bid with a victory in this race and equaled the feat last season. For the first time, Blaney finds himself in a true must-win situation, and the pressure is even heavier as Blaney starts 31st, deep in the pack for this 500-mile affair. Can he come away with a third grandfather clock in a row to seal the deal in the desert?
Or, will it be one of the cars outside the playoffs that join the likes of Shane van Gisbergen as a spoiler?
Find out today in the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
This Week in NASCAR
For a more detailed look at last week’s race at Talladega, our esteemed writer Jey took a crack at creating a recap.
Starting off the week, JR Motorsports announced that Truck Series racer Rajah Caruth will pilot their No. 88 Chevy Camaro next season on a part-time basis.
In Caruth’s subsequent appearance on the Dale Jr. Download, Caruth revealed that he will be moving up to the Xfinity Series full-time next year, but he will be splitting his time between JRM and Jordan Anderson Racing.
A big question mark left the NASCAR public consciousness this week as the sanctioning body released the planned layout for the San Diego street course race that’s due to take place on the Coronado Naval Base in June of next year.
Later in the week, Spire Motorsports welcomed the newest driver of the No. 7 Chevy to the fold. Trackhouse cast-off Daniel Suárez inked a deal with the burgeoning race team to pilot their flagship car for 2026, hoping to raise the team’s profile from pretenders to contenders.
CARS Tour Late Model Stock champion Landen Lewis joined Kevin Harvick on the Happy Hour podcast to let the world know he’d be running a part-time schedule for Niece Motorsports in the Craftsman Truck Series in the 2026 season.
A couple of high-profile talents re-signed with their current organizations this week as Front Row Motorsports elected to retain Zane Smith for the next two seasons and Richard Childress Racing is bringing Jesse Love back for another Xfinity Series season in 2026.
In the Craftsman Truck Series, Corey Heim scored his 11th victory of the season with a win at Martinsville, triggering a crazy points battle that ultimately shook out with defending champion Ty Majeski, Kaden Honeycutt, and Tyler Ankrum joining Heim at Phoenix with a chance to win the chip.
Season-long contenders Layne Riggs, Daniel Hemric, and Grant Enfinger were the four drivers eliminated after Friday night’s race.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series paid their own visit to the Paperclip, and in the latter half of the event, Taylor Gray showed he had what it took to be a NASCAR winner by holding off a hungry field of drivers on several late restarts to get the victory.
Gray’s victory gave way for more playoff drivers to advance on points with Jesse Love and Carson Kvapil joining defending champ Justin Allgaier and JRM phenom Connor Zilisch in the championship race while Sheldon Creed, Brandon Jones, Sammy Smith, and Sam Mayer were eliminated.
Mayer found himself in the crosshairs of Jeb Burton after contact on an early restart, and the duo just couldn’t leave one another alone, culminating in a post-race clash where Mayer unceremoniously turned Burton after the checkers.
In qualifying yesterday for the Cup race, William Byron enhanced his playoff chances by claiming the pole while the ever-hungry Ty Gibbs lines up alongside him on the front row. For a full lineup, click here.
The Race
Today’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway begins at 2pm Eastern time on NBC with commentators Leigh Diffey, Steve Letarte, and Jeff Burton on the call.
The 500 in the race title represents the amount of laps to be completed around this half-mile oval. Those 500 laps will be split into three stages, ending on the following laps: 130-260-500.
As for the average fall Martinsville race, it looks something like this: 10 cautions for 73 caution laps, 14 lead changes, an average duration of 3 hours and 32 minutes, the final caution waves around lap 442 (or 59 laps to go), and just two instances of overtime in the last 10 fall visits, 2017 and 2021, which means we could be on the path to a third today.
Writer’s Pick
Last week, I chose Kyle Busch for my writer’s pick, and he never flashed speed the entire day, slinking down to 19th.
This week’s writer’s pick is Ryan Blaney.
He won the last two fall races here, so I’m confident he will seek to emulate George Lucas and make this a proper trilogy today.
(Top Photo Credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography/NKP)
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