NASCAR Cup Series

You never get shorted at Martinsville

Published Mar. 31, 2010 2:07 a.m. ET

Darrell Waltrip

Now folks, I have told you in the past that I love superspeedway racing. Who doesn’t love seeing the cars go 200 mph? There’s nothing more exhilarating and nerve-racking than watching these fast race cars on the big speedway inches apart from one another.

With all that said, there is no better 500 laps of get-'er-done racing, in my book, than Bristol and Martinsville back to back. The racing last week at Bristol was awesome. As you heard us talk about on the broadcast Monday, yes they are both short tracks, but that is where the similarity ends.

Bristol is the high banks. With the progressive banking now, we’ve seen two-wide and, yes, even three-wide racing — believe it or not — on a little half-mile track. Now, Martinsville is a flat race track with tight turns. Just take a look at an aerial view of the track and you will easily see why we call it a paperclip racetrack. It’s very confined racing. Heck, for that matter, you might call it restricted racing. Yes, unlike Daytona and Talladega where they have to use a restrictor plate to keep speeds down, at Martinsville you are restricted by the size of the track.

As we have seen throughout the years, the only way to pass at Martinsville is to give the guy ahead of you a little nudge to move him out of the way. Now hopefully he won’t spin out like Johnny Sauter did Saturday there in the Truck race when Ron Hornaday gave him a little bump.

At Martinsville you can always count on a lot of side-by-side body slamming and contact. That makes for very intense emotional racing. Drivers get frustrated during 500 laps up there. They get mad at the other drivers. They get mad at their team, they get mad at themselves, they get mad at NASCAR — bottom line is they just get mad, period.

If you don’t believe me then turn on a scanner at Martinsville and listen in. It might, however, not be something you would want your kids to listen in on. The language can get pretty blue at times as the frustration level rises.

The racing is action packed. It’s exciting and fun to watch with the outcome always unpredictable. I mean that. Just look at Monday. For me, Larry McReynolds and Mike Joy that finish blew us right out of the television booth. When that last caution flag waved with just a handful of laps left and here came the No. 11 of Denny Hamlin and the No. 18 of Kyle Busch down pit road — oh by the way — your leader and the second-place cars at the time — we thought those guys had lost their minds.

But here is what we didn’t take into account and I think it’s a product of not being used to it on the short tracks yet — the double-file restarts. In the past, if you came out of the pits in 10th, let's say, well there was no way you could pass nine cars in three or four laps to win the race. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

Now with the double-file restarts, if you come out of the pits in 10th, you start on the outside of the fifth row and so now there are only a handful of cars literally in front of you. So now the double-file restarts are playing a much more impactful role on the short tracks than we had ever realized.

Now for the crew chief you have a couple more options in your strategy planning that you never had in previous years. Monday we saw the No. 11 come down and get four tires while his teammate in the No. 18 took only two tires. Digressing a second, if I am going to come to pit road that late in the race and am only one of two cars that did, I sure would have taken the time to get four and not just two. That potentially cost Kyle the ability to finish that pass on the outside when he needed maximum grip.

That’s where Denny Hamlin had the advantage. He had so much more grip than all those other cars that stayed out. Those old tires they had made those drivers more cautious because they were slipping and sliding around. With his four fresh ones, Denny was able to do what he did and come home a winner again at Martinsville.

All that said, Denny still needed the seas to part and, by golly, that is exactly what happened. On the green-white-checker restart, Jeff Gordon was the leader and we all assumed from past Martinsville experience, the race was his. Jeff and Matt Kenseth got together in Turn 1 and those two made a lot of contact. Matt was able to cut in under Jeff. They went down the backstretch and both drove too deep into the corner and took care of themselves.

Sitting in the cat bird’s seat was Hamlin with those four fresh tires and away he went to take the checkered flag. It really couldn’t have worked out any better for Hamlin. Now I still don’t think crew chief Mike Ford made the right call bringing Denny to pit road. I still believe that had Denny and Kyle Busch not pitted and given up first and second, well that’s exactly how they would have finished Monday afternoon in Martinsville.

But you know what? They didn’t and as the old saying goes, “The rest is history.” Now what is still a little confusing is why NASCAR threw that caution for Jeff Burton’s tire letting go. Jeff Gordon was only a 100 feet or so from getting to the start/finish line and NASCAR hadn’t thrown a caution for the same instance all day long. So why then? It created the green-white-checker scenario. Now I am not faulting NASCAR but I just am not sure what its thinking was.

All in all it was an exciting day. It was nice seeing some different names up front Monday. Ryan Newman, Martin Truex Jr., Brian Vickers and Carl Edwards, just to name a few, had great runs.

Now on the opposite side of things and the car I was surprised by the most was the No. 48. Let’s face it, Jimmie Johnson has owned Martinsville these last few years. So my question is: Did going from the wing to the spoiler have an affect on the No. 48? Think about this, Jimmie never led a lap at Martinsville and that is so uncharacteristic. You are talking about the guy who had won five out of the past eight races there.

So it will be interesting to see how things go at Phoenix on the 1-mile track, which is another track the No. 48 owns. There is the school of thought that changing from the wing to the spoiler will alter how you set your car up. Personally I don’t buy that. I believe NASCAR has done a great job of balancing these cars out not only in the wind tunnel but also through its testing.

Let’s face it, even though it was on a Monday, you couldn’t have asked for better racing. From the drop of the green flag we had simply a great race all day long. There were lots of lead changes, beatin’ and bangin’ and an exciting finish. I hated that the rain forced it to Monday but you have to give credit to the fans that were able to stick around because it was a pretty good crowd.

Monday at Martinsville was the textbook example of what short-track racing is all about. It was exciting, wild, and unpredictable with a crazy finish. That just doesn’t get any better to me.