Practice #1 : Martinsville Speedway

• Thursday, March 27th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

Gen 7 car has turned the tables at Martinsville Speedway

For the first time in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series regular season, drivers in the top division will compete on a bona fide short track when the series visits Martinsville Speedway for Sunday’s Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

With a few exceptions, Martinsville traditionally has been a feast-or-famine track. Alex Bowman, who won the fall race in 2021, has no other top-five finishes in 17 starts at the 0.526-mile paper-clip-shaped venue.

Similarly, Christopher Bell, who secured a Championship 4 berth with a Martinsville victory in 2022, hasn’t scored another top five at the track in his nine starts there.

Of course, there are exceptions. In his last five races at the track in southern Virginia, Kyle Larson, the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, has posted an average finish of 2.8, and he comes to Martinsville fresh from his first victory of the season last Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“When I started at Hendrick Motorsports, the car was probably a little bit better than I was at Martinsville,” Larson said. “But we’ve gotten better as a whole, and I think it’s one of our best tracks now.

“We got a win there in 2023 and had solid runs and finishes there last year, so we’re looking forward to this weekend.”

The introduction of the Next Gen car into NASCAR’s top series in 2022 has proven to be a real line of demarcation. In the Gen 6 era, drivers such as Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. took center stage at Martinsville.

In the Gen 7 era, those four competitors are winless at the paper clip, and Hendrick drivers have moved to the forefront. Defending race winner William Byron led a 1-2-3 Hendrick finish in last year’s spring race, marking the first time a single organization has swept the podium positions at Martinsville.

The victory was Byron’s second at the track since 2021, with Larson accounting for another Hendrick win in the spring Race of 2023. Byron, however, approaches the Cook Out 400 with some degree of trepidation.

Yes, he has won two of the last three spring races, but the No. 24 team has struggled at Martinsville in the fall, barely making the Championship 4 with finishes of 16th and sixth in 2023 and 2024.

“I’m confident but also not extremely confident,” Byron said. “We’ve had some good runs, and we’ve also had some just OK runs. We have some work to do from Bowman Gray (at the Clash in February) on our short-track package, but I think we’ll still be in a good place.

“It’s really about having a good long-run car, and that’s what we will really focus on.”

Ryan Blaney has won the fall Playoff race for the past two seasons—with his 2023 win leading to a series championship—and Bell has the other triumph in the past six Gen 7 races.

Hamlin leads all full-time active drivers with five Martinsville victories, and it’s not as if the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota hasn’t been in the mix in the Next Gen era. He simply hasn’t been in Victory Lane.

In four of the last five Martinsville races, Hamlin has finished in the top-five. He also leads active drivers in career top fives (20), top 10s (26) and laps led at the track (2,448).

Another radical change in the Next Gen era is the apparent diminishing importance of starting position at Martinsville. The last five winners have come from starting spots outside the top 10. In the previous 14 races, only twice did the eventual winner start from a grid position worse than 10th.

• Martinsville Speedway
• Cook Out 400
• Busch Pole Award Pole Winner: Christopher Bell
• Age: 30
• Team : No 20 - DEWALT Outdoors Toyota
• Owner: Joe Gibbs
• Crew Chief: Adam Stevens
• Christopher Bell won the Pole Award for the Cook Out 400 with a lap of 19718 seconds, 96034 mph
• This is his 14th pole in 187 NASCAR Cup Series races
• This is his first pole and first top-10 start in 2025
• This is his first pole in 11 races at Martinsville Speedway
• Chase Elliott (second) posted his third top-10 start of 2025 and his 14th in 20 races at Martinsville Speedway
• Alex Bowman (third) posted his fifth top-10 start at Martinsville Speedway It is his third in seven races this season
• Shane Van Gisbergen (33rd) was the fastest qualifying rookie

• Sunday, March 30th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

New approach gives Denny Hamlin dominating NASCAR Cup victory at Martinsville

It didn’t take Denny Hamlin long to find the recipe for success in Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

Hamlin grabbed the lead on Lap126 of 400 in the seventh NASCAR Cup Series race of the season and never looked back.

With flawless work from his pit crew, the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led 274 of the last 275 laps—with the only exception a lap credited to pole winner Christopher Bell, who raced side-by-side with Hamlin after the final restart on Lap 326.

Hamlin pulled away toward the end of the final 75-lap green-flag run and beat Bell, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, to the finish line by 4.617 seconds.

The victory was Hamlin’s sixth at the 0.526-mile short track, most among full-time active drivers, but his first at Martinsville since 2015. It was his first win of the season and the 55th of his career, tying him with Rusty Wallace for 11th on the career victory list.

The win was also Hamlin’s first with crew chief Chris Gayle, who took over the pit box on the No. 11 Toyota this season. Hamlin has now won Cup races with seven different crew chiefs.

“You know, Chris Gayle, all the engineers, the pit crew, everybody really on that wall right there, just deciding they were going to come here with a different approach than what we’ve been over the last few years,” said Hamlin, who won at Martinsville for the first time with the Gen 7 race car.

“It was just amazing. The car was great. It did everything I needed it to do. Just so happy to win with Chris, get 55… Obviously, back here in Martinsville where I spent so many years racing late models and whatnot—gosh, I love winning here.”

Bell’s No. 20 Toyota was too loose over the final run to keep up with Hamlin’s No. 11 Camry.

“We were back and forth on balance a little bit,” Bell said. “I asked to be freer throughout the whole race. That last run, I just went a little bit too loose and lost my drive off (the corners).

“It was a great weekend for Joe Gibbs Racing. Showed a lot of pace. All four of the cars were really good. Really happy to kind of get back up front. The last two weeks have been rough for this 20 team… Really happy for Denny. He’s the Martinsville master. Second is not that bad.”

Bubba Wallace finished third for the second straight race, as Toyotas claimed the top three finishing positions at the paper-clip-shaped track.

“That final restart, I let that second (place) get away,” said Wallace, who drives for the 23XI Racing team co-owned by Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan. 

“I don’t know if I had anything for Denny. It would have been fun to try.

“But all in all, hell of a day for Toyota. Top three. That’s nice. Keep the momentum going, having fun.”

Chase Elliott came home fourth, followed by Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson.

Ross Chastain, Ryan Preece, Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe and Todd Gilliland completed the top 10.

Before Hamlin took control, a debris caution on Lap 31 resulted in a dramatic change to the running order. Josh Berry led a group of six drivers who stayed on the track under caution, and maintained the top spot for 40 laps, the first circuits led by the No. 21 Wood Brothers car at Martinsville since 2005.

A caution for Chris Buescher’s spin on the frontstretch ended Berry’s stint at the front. A collision with Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota on pit road and subsequent alternator issues cost Berry two laps and took him out of the mix.

Logano stayed on the track under the Lap 71 yellow and won the first 80-lap stage over Alex Bowman in a two-lap sprint, but it was an up-and-down day for the reigning Cup champion.

On Lap 317, Briscoe’s Toyota bounced off the inside curbing in Turn 3 and sent Logano’s Ford spinning toward the outside wall. Logano pitted for fresh tires, restarted 25th and drove back to eighth place by lap 400, scoring his first top 10 of the season.

William Byron, who finished 22nd after a lengthy pit stop under the first caution, retained the series lead by 17 points over Larson.

• Drivers Entered: 38
• Laps Scheduled: 400
• Margin of Victory: 04.617 Seconds
• Time of Race: 3 Hours 5 Minutes 11 Seconds
• Average Speed: 68.170
• Cautions: 10 for 86 laps
• Lead Changes: 9
• Green Flag Passes: 2,267 (7.2 passes per green flag lap)

• Martinsville Speedway
• Cook Out 400
• Race Winner: Denny Hamlin
• Age: 44
• Team : No 11 - Progressive Toyota
• Owner: Joe Gibbs
• Crew Chief: Chris Gayle
• Denny Hamlin won the Cook Out 400, his 55th victory in 693 Cup Series races
• This is his first victory and fourth top-10 finish in 2025
• This is his sixth victory and 27th top-10 finish in 39 races at Martinsville Speedway
• Christopher Bell (second) posted his fourth top-10 finish in 11 races at Martinsville Speedway It is his fourth top-10 finish in 2025
• Bubba Wallace (third) posted his fourth top-10 finish in 15 races at Martinsville Speedway
• Riley Herbst (32nd) was the highest finishing rookie
• William Byron leads the point standings by 17 points over Kyle Larson