THE NASCAR The playoffs have been a hotly debated topic in the industry since their first iteration nearly two decades ago. But recent Martinsville Motor Speedway The Cup Series races helped prove their worth in more ways than just guaranteeing a close battle for the championship.
Martinsville has been a constant on the NASCAR calendar since the sanctioning body was officially established in 1949. It has witnessed every change in the sport over those 75 years, including the recent introduction of the latest car model NASCAR.
The Next Gen NASCAR car struggled to produce much passing on short tracks
The sanctioning body introduced the Next Gen car for competition in 2022. The idea was to provide teams with all the parts needed to build their vehicles from a single supplier, in the hopes of reducing costs and promote parity throughout the series.
It’s still very expensive to own a Cup Series racing team, but the series has seen a few new owners join the sport, at least in part because of the Next Gen cars’ business model. The parity aspect was a huge success in the 2022 season. A record 19 different drivers won a race, including 16 among the 26 regular season races.
Yet the New generation car wasn’t perfect in its first season. The rear ends were too stiff and caused concussions for several drivers when their cars backed into a wall. It also failed to match the quality of racing put on by the previous car model on short tracks and road courses.
The April 2022 race at Martinsville was perhaps the clearest example. William Byron dominated with 212 laps led in the 400-lap event after Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott led the first 185 circuits. The race featured just two caution flags for incidents, and even the last of those was a borderline call in an apparent attempt to spice up the end of the event with seven laps to go.
The Next Gen car isn’t the only culprit, however. The spring and fall races at Martinsville have featured a wide gap in the respective intensity of their races in years since Martinsville became one of 10 tracks to host a playoff race when the original Chase Championship format did debuted in 2004.
Postseason races have regularly featured increased intensity at Martinsville
NASCAR added eliminations to the playoff format in 2014, and Martinsville has been the final race before the championship event since 2020. The first two years as a de facto semifinal featured races with 12 and 15 cautions, respectively. .
Of course, the number of cautions does not necessarily always correlate with the intensity of the race, but this is often the case at Martinsville as most incidents on the short flat track occur when a driver in pushes another out of the way in the corners.
This feature all but disappeared during Martinsville’s first race with the Next Gen car last year, and it didn’t change much during the playoff run. A combination of factors, including wider tires, power-limited engines and the ability to shift gears, made overtaking much more difficult.
Playoff format may have saved the quality of Martinsville’s fall race
The 2022 playoff run at Martinsville hasn’t been much different in terms of drivers’ ability to complete passes. The event featured only six caution flags, including two for stage breaks, but this race is considered an instant classic due to the incredibly intense final 50 laps that included historic Ross Chastain. “Hail Melon” wall movement in the last lap to gain the positions necessary to access Championship 4.
Without the playoffs, the October race at Martinsville a year ago likely would have been just another disappointing short track event with the Next Gen car. In many ways, it was the playoffs that saved the quality of this run.
Sunday’s 2023 spring race at Martinsville was back to the leader’s doldrums that several early-season events at Martinsville have suffered from in recent years. Pole sitter Ryan Preece led the first 135 laps until the first caution of the day sent the field to the pits. Preece received a pit penalty for speeding and was only able to move up to 15th place in the final 265 laps.
The rest of the race was marked by a stage break, a caution for a loose tire on the track and a crash for JJ Yeley with 46 laps remaining. Track position was the most important determining factor in whether a driver had a good race or not. Joey Logano started the race from the back of the field and was unable to gain much ground until a pit strategy call gave him the lead during the caution for the Yeley wreck. Logano was then able to hold on to second place behind winner Kyle Larson.
The racing was pretty standard for what the Martinsville spring event has become. He lacked the intensity of the fall playoffs.
