No shortage of storylines emerging from Martinsville
I think it is safe to say there were a lot of interesting storylines Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
It wasn't our normal cast of characters we usually have as the dominant group at the Virginia short track. The cool thing was seeing so many different names who not only ran well, but finished well on Sunday.
For example, what a great run for AJ Allmendinger, who finished second to Kyle Busch. Allmendinger made a series of great moves throughout the day and especially late in the race to earn that spot.
Kyle Larson will tell you the reason he ran the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville on Saturday was to help him on Sunday -- same as the race-winning Busch. In his young career, Martinsville has always been one of the worst tracks on the circuit for both Larson and Busch, but Sunday Larson came home with an amazing third-place finish, only two spots behind Busch.
Ironically, all weekend long leading up to Sunday's race the No. 3 Chevrolet of Austin Dillon was the worst of the three Richard Childress Racing cars. For him to come out of there with a top-five finish had to be extremely rewarding for the driver and his entire team. On top of that, all three of the RCR cars finished in the Top 10.
Also Brian Vickers, who continues to sub for the injured Tony Stewart, had a great run Sunday. He brought the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet home in seventh spot.
I found it interesting that our front row for the start of the race, comprised of pole-sitter Joey Logano and Kasey Kahne, dropped like a rock pretty quickly. The most surprising of the two was Logano because I wasn't real sure how good Kasey Kahne was going to be anyway. But they both fell off the radar pretty quickly into the race. Logano ended up 11th and Kahne 22nd.
Three drivers, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick started pretty far back. They did run well Sunday but I don't think any of the three got the finish they were expecting. Kevin clearly showed the most strength, leading 72 laps, but the best he could muster for a finish was 17th after getting caught in the outside lane on the final restart with 12 laps to go.
Clearly the star of the weekend was Kyle Busch. He continues to show he is as versatile a driver as there is in the garage area by sweeping the Martinsville race weekend. Kyle won the truck race on Saturday and then dominated on Sunday by leading 352 of 500 laps. He's also closing in pretty quickly on having a win at every track on the Sprint Cup Series circuit.
I think what gets overlooked is this kid is still only 30 years old. Barring any major career-ending injury, Kyle could easily race for another 10 years and I can pretty much guarantee he will. So there's no telling how many wins in all three of our major touring series he'll rack up before he calls it quits.
I enjoyed Sunday's race. I actually think the low-downforce package made a little bigger difference than any of us anticipated. We saw strategy being played out. The game changer to me was the caution with 17 laps to go and we went back racing with 12 laps to go.
I felt like if you were at the front you had to stay out. That ended up being the right call. The one though that did come to pit road and it made a difference for was Kyle Larson. His team, led by crew chief Chad Johnston, only took on two tires.
I guess my only wish would be that Goodyear would come back with a tire that would lay down enough rubber so that we could have two grooves to race on. Don't get me wrong, they didn't bring a bad tire by any means. I just wish we could get that track rubbered up some more next time.
Lastly I want to add that I was disgusted to see fans throwing things on the track after the race. I've said it before and I'll say it to their faces, whoever is throwing this stuff isn't a race fan. They don't deserve to be at the race track when they pull stuff like this.
