Martinsville serves as pressure cooker to intensify the Chase
When the rag drops at Martinsville Speedway to start this afternoon’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500, it will officially be 'go time' for the eight drivers still in the hunt to win this year’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
In the first two rounds of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, the main goal for the drivers was to avoid mistakes and post the dreaded “good points days” so they could advance to the next round.
Last week at Talladega Superspeedway, for example, we saw three of the four Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota hang out at the back of the draft to avoid a crash.
Drivers won’t have that luxury today at Martinsville or in the following two races at Texas and Phoenix. Anyone and everyone who wants to make it to the championship finale at Homestead in three weeks is going to have to race hard these next three races.
And you better believe the drivers and crew chiefs are aware of the numbers: Jimmie Johnson has won the last four Chase races at Texas, where the teams will race next week, while Kevin Harvick has eight victories at Phoenix, including five of the last six.
That puts an awful lot of pressure on drivers to win today.
Among the drivers still in the Chase, the guy who’s probably looked the best so far this weekend is Joey Logano, who will start on the outside of Row 1 in his Team Penske Ford. Remember, Logano was leading this race last year when he got stuffed into the wall by an angry Matt Kenseth.
Keep an eye on Kyle Busch, who led 352 of 500 laps in winning here in the spring, and Johnson, who has eight Martinsville victories. Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin has five race wins here as well.
That said, there are a number of challengers not running for a title who could rise up today, including pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr., Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and AJ Allmendinger, among others.
With perfect weather at Martinsville, expect a somewhat calm first half of the race, with the intensity to ratchet up exponentially as the laps wind down.
It should be a great race and at the end of it, I look for Logano or Kyle Busch to be in Victory Lane.
