Jeff Gordon has the right recipe for Martinsville
March 27, 2014
Staff Report
NASCAR Wire Service
Take 22 full-time seasons in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Add in four helpings of NASCAR championships.
Sprinkle in 88 career victories, ensuring eight of them are of the Martinsville variety.
Garnish with seven pole awards, 27 top-five finishes, 34 top 10s and an average finishing position of 6.8 at Martinsville.
The result: Jeff Gordon and his extraordinary ability to master the shortest track on the schedule.
With
the series heading to Martinsville for Sunday's STP 500 (1 p.m. on
FOX), Gordon and teammate Jimmie Johnson are tied for first among active
drivers with eight wins apiece.
Both
Gordon and Johnson are among the drivers still seeking their first win
of the season, almost guaranteeing them a spot in the Chase for the
NASCAR Sprint Cup. Gordon has won at all of the tracks on the 2014
schedule with the exception of Kentucky Speedway, however, his best
chance to lock up a spot in the postseason might come this weekend at
the .526-mile paperclip-shaped oval.
In
42 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts in Martinsville, Gordon has never posted a
DNF. His four runner-up finishes and 27 top fives at the track are
series-bests
among all active drivers. He leads all active drivers in top 10s with
34, 13 more than the second driver on the list.
Gordon
also leads all active drivers with 1,029 fastest laps run. His 6.8
average finishing position ranks second among active drivers, while his
average starting position of 7.2 is tops, which includes a series-best
seven poles among active drivers.
With
all the success the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
has experienced at Martinsville, it is easy to see that he knows the
best way to manage the short track.
"You
have to be aggressive, but you have to be patient," Gordon said. "You
really want to ‘roll' into the corners, but it's very easy to overdrive
the entry and use too much brake. You also have to ‘roll' into the
corners while getting traction up off [the corners]."
In
his most recent trip to the track in southwest Virginia last October,
Gordon passed Matt Kenseth with 21 laps remaining. He led the rest of
the
way and beat Kenseth to the finish line by 0.605 seconds to win his
eighth grandfather clock – Martinsville's signature winner's award.
"Martinsville is one of my favorite tracks, and the grandfather clock is one of my favorite trophies," Gordon said.
In
the spring 2013 event, Gordon finished third behind teammate Johnson
and Clint Bowyer. Gordon and Johnson's team, Hendrick Motorsports, leads
the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in wins at Martinsville with 21.
With
all the right ingredients in place at Martinsville, Gordon will be
making a strong push to add his name to the Chase contenders this
weekend.
WALLACE RETURNS TO SITE OF HISTORIC WIN
On
October 26, 2013, Darrell Wallace Jr. led the final 50 laps on his way
to win the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville
Speedway,
joining Wendell Scott of nearby Danville, Va., as the second
African-American driver to win a NASCAR national series event almost 50
years after Scott's victory.
This
weekend, Wallace, a Drive for Diversity graduate, and the rest of the
truck series return to the short track for Saturday's Kroger 250 (1:30
p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1) for the first time since his historic win.
"This
is an emotional win for me, especially to do it in Wendell Scott's
backyard," Wallace said at the time of his victory in October. "I love
coming here to Martinsville; it's always good to me and it finally paid
off."
A
win this weekend would make Wallace the first driver to win
back-to-back truck races at the track. In Wallace's only other truck
start at Martinsville,
which came last spring, he finished fifth after leading 34 laps. After
two starts at the track, his driver rating is 115.9.
The
truck series returns to action for the first time since its season
opener at Daytona International Speedway on February 21. Kyle Busch won
that
event in which Wallace finished 26th after getting caught up in an
accident 25 laps short of the finish line.
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