In The Know – MARTINSVILLE
It’s time for some Saturday night live short track racing. Get up-to-speed on everything you need to know as we head to Martinsville, VA as we tackle the shortest track on the NASCAR Cup Schedule.
The Details
NASCAR Cup Series Overview
- Event: Blu-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400 (Round 8 of 36)
- Time/Date: 7:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday, April 9
- Location: Martinsville (Va.) Speedway
- Layout: .526-mile oval
- Laps/Miles: 400 laps/210.4 miles
- Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 100 laps / Final Stage: 220 laps
- TV/Radio: FS1 / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
The BROADCAST
Get ready for some Saturday Night entertainment. You can watch all the action from Martinsville on FS1.
SHR FAST FACTS
Kevin Harvick:
Baseball’s opening day is this week (April 7, to be specific) and Harvick is batting almost .500 when it comes to finishing among the top-10 at Martinsville. The driver of the No. 4 Subway Ford Mustang has made 41 career NASCAR Cup Series starts at the .526-mile oval and recorded 20 top-10s, tied with Kyle Busch for the second-highest tally among active Cup Series drivers. Only Denny Hamlin has more top-10s at Martinsville (22).
Harvick has tasted success in every type of car he has raced at Martinsville. In addition to his NASCAR Cup Series win, he has a NASCAR Xfinity Series triumph and three NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victories.
DYK? Harvick tested a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour car at Martinsville on Jan. 21, 2020. The Modified Tour is NASCAR’s oldest division and it is the only open-wheel series sanctioned by NASCAR. Compared to a NASCAR Cup Series car, a Tour car is 11 inches shorter in height and a little more than 23 inches wider. It also weighs nearly 800 pounds less. Harvick’s test came via Ryan Preece’s No. 6NY Tour car. Preece was the 2013 series champion and he earned the first of his 25 career Modified Tour victories at Martinsville on Sept. 20, 2008, leading 265 of the race’s 300 laps. Harvick and his company, KHI Management, represent Preece, who is SHR’s reserve driver in 2022.
Aric Almirola:
Almirola is the only NASCAR Cup Series driver to finish in the top-10 in this year’s opening three races. He finished fifth in the season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, sixth at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, and sixth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Almirola’s top-10 streak ended with a 12th-place finish at Phoenix Raceway despite running inside the top-10 throughout the race.
In 26 starts at Martinsville, Almirola has earned six top-10 finishes, one top-five, and has led 75 laps on the .526-mile, paperclip-shaped oval.
Chase Briscoe:
Chase Briscoe is looking for his second win of the season in his No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) at the paperclip-shaped Martinsville (Va.) Speedway oval. In two Cup Series starts at the half-mile short track, Briscoe has a best finish of 22nd earned last fall. His best Cup Series result on a short track was an 11th-place finish earned last Sunday at Virginia’s other short track, Richmond Raceway.
Seven races into the 2022 season, Briscoe is ninth in points, 49 out of first. He currently holds a spot in the 16-driver playoff field by virtue of his win March 13 at Phoenix Raceway.
The 27-year-old driver from Mitchell, Indiana, made 15 short-track starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, scoring two wins – September 2020 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and July 2019 at Iowa Speedway in Newton – and earning 10 top-10 finishes. When the Xfinity Series made its return to Martinsville in the fall of 2020 after a 13-year hiatus, Briscoe finished seventh.
Cole Custer:
Saturday night’s 400-lap race around the .526-mile, paperclip-shaped Martinsville layout will be Custer’s 83rd Cup Series start and his fifth at Martinsville. The 24-year-old from Ladera Ranch, California, had a best Martinsville finish of 13th in October 2020, and was 23rd the last time the series visited the track last October.
Custer, the 2020 Cup Series Rookie of the Year, had solid runs among his six NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races at Martinsville from 2014 through 2016. He qualified on the pole and led a race-high 96 of 200 laps before finishing fourth in the October 2015 race, when he drove the No. 00 JR Motorsports entry. His next-best Martinsville Truck Series finish of seventh came in the October 2016 race, his most recent, when he drove the JR Motorsports truck to a seventh-place finish after qualifying third and leading 17 laps. He drove to another front-row qualifying spot alongside polesitter and race-winner Joey Logano in the March 2015 Truck Series race at Martinsville, leading two laps of the race before finishing 16th in the JR Motorsports truck.
OUR WEEKLY WRAPS
We’re bringing some sharp schemes to the paperclip. Check out the wraps. we’ll have at Martinsville.
What Our Drivers are Saying:
Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Subway Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
This is your 22nd year in the sport, but you’re driving as hard as when it was just your second year in the sport. What keeps you going and competing at this level?
“I like where I race. I like Stewart-Haas Racing. I like the atmosphere. I like the people here. That’s really the biggest reason that I like to do it, especially this year. You’re with a group of people where you’re constantly problem solving. You’re trying to fix it faster than everybody else and come to something that is better than everybody else so you can win races. I like the core group of guys that I started here with. That’s why they all came here, and I guess I would feel like I’m abandoning them if I didn’t go a couple more years. For me, I still enjoy that challenge. I enjoy where this series is, and learning about the new car is not a bad thing to do as you go forward into the future and do something different.”
Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield Spirals Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
What is it about short-track racing that drivers love?
“Short-track racing is where we all came from. It’s where our sport began. You get to put the racing back in the driver’s hands and there’s a lot of beating and banging involved. You can’t pass much, so you have to stay mentally and physically focused the entire time. It’s close-quarter racing at its finest and even better when we get to race under the lights on a Saturday night.”
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
Now that you’ve raced the NextGen on a true short track, what can we expect to see this weekend at Martinsville?
“I think we’ll see typical Martinsville – hard racing and a few guys mad at each other by the end of the race. In the past, brakes have come into play, guys using them up early in the race and having a hard time getting through the corners. And I think we’ll still see some issues where brakes are concerned but it might look a bit different than it has in the past. The track we raced on for the Clash is probably the closest to Martinsville, just half the size, so a lot of what you saw with the longer straightaways and tighter corners, and how guys were setting up passes, is likely what we’ll see this weekend. At least, I hope that’s how it goes. We ran pretty well there so, hopefully, we can take what we did there and have it translate to Martinsville. It’s always a fun race, but a lot more fun if you’re up near the front and out of the trouble happening further back in the field.”
Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
What are your thoughts about the significance of doing well at Martinsville, being one of the iconic short tracks in NASCAR?
“Martinsville is definitely one every single driver wants to win because I think the driver can make a pretty big difference there. You get the grandfather clock, all the history about the place, every single driver wants to go there and get that trophy. It’s just one of those tracks I would call one of the crown jewel races because it’s one you want to check off your list.”
subway: Kevin Harvick’s full throttle ham
Harvick is back in the green-and-yellow colors of Subway this weekend at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway for the Blu-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400, and his front-running ways have earned Harvick his own Subway signature sub – the Full-Throttle Ham – which features thin-sliced Black Forest ham, crispy hickory-smoked bacon, pepper-jack cheese, and lettuce and tomato on fresh-baked artisan Italian bread, all finished with yellow mustard. The Full-Throttle Ham is sold exclusively on The Vault, available only at Subway.com and the Subway app, where sandwiches created by some of today’s most notable sports stars can be delivered straight to your door via Subway Delivery, powered by DoorDash. Subway has a $0 delivery fee on all Subway Delivery orders and guests can still earn and redeem Subway MyWay® Rewards points.
Looking for some entertainment? We put the No. 4 pit crew to the test to see if they can make their way to the Subway Vault, and you’ll want to watch the video to see if they delivered
