Track Description:
— At just 0.526 miles in length, the tiny Martinsville Speedway is the smallest, slowest and oldest oval track in NASCAR. In fact, the southern Virginia short track opened in 1946, more than a year before NASCAR founder Big Bill France first organized the sanctioning body. Although Martinsville is slow, it is anything but easy. In fact it has frustrated even some of the best drivers in NASCAR. Described by some as a paper clip and others as two dragstrips connected by a pair of hairpin corners, Martinsville requires smoothness and finesse. Pit road is claustrophobically tight and tempers always flare over 500 laps. The brakes generate a tremendous amount of heat and it’s easy to melt the beds on front tire by overusing the brakes. In recent years, two drivers have all but owned Martinsville: Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson. Together, the two have won the last nine Martinsville Cup races, Hamlin taking the three most recent victories. Jeff Gordon has seven Martinsville race wins, the last two coming in 2005, when he both events at the Virginia track. Gordon has an average finish of 7.05 at Martinsville, compared with 5.33 for Johnson and 6.09 for Hamlin. It’s unusual for one driver to have a finishing average of 7.0 at a track; for three drivers to have the numbers Johnson, Hamlin and Gordon have at a single track is unheard of. On the flip side, Martinsville has almost always been a horrible track for the Roush Fenway Racing drivers: Greg Biffle’s average finish here is 23.00, and the four current RFR drivers — Biffle, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and David Ragan — have just three career top-five finishes at Martinsville in 60 combined starts. David Reutimann struggles here, too, with an average finish of 25.5 in eight starts.