Tyre gamble pays off, Kyle Larson runs away with Martinsville win

It was a risky decision by Cliff Daniels, but it worked out in the best way possible. During what would be the final pit stop of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, Daniels elected to change just right-side tyres on Kyle Larson‘s car as the others took four.

Despite having an older pair of tyres on the left, Larson restarted fifth and took the lead with thirty laps remaining. The rest of the field led by Joey Logano had no answer for Larson as he took off to score his second win of the year by over four seconds. Larson even described Logano as not being much of “a factor all day. I was never around him at all throughout the race, but he’s a very good short track racer.”

The victory is the first at Martinsville for the #5 since 1984 with Geoff Bodine in what was Hendrick Motorsports‘ maiden triumph.

“Earlier in the race when a couple of guys stayed out on older tyres and survived for twenty to thirty laps, which was twenty to thirty laps longer than I thought they would have, that was a tell sign,” Daniels commented. “A couple of data points last year of guys on higher lap tires still maintaining track position. So still a little bit of a gamble, but we knew there were some data points where it had worked. So that’s the way we went.”

Stewart-Haas Racing was the top team throughout the day, but it ultimately ended in disappointment. Ryan Preece won the pole and led a race-high 135 laps with the Stage #1 win, the latter coming with team-mate Aric Almirola running second, while Kevin Harvick and Chase Briscoe placed 1–2 in Stage #2. However, Preece was busted for speeding on pit road between the second and third stages, forcing him to make up lost ground in the latter and finishing fifteenth. Harvick struggled to a twentieth-place finish.

Briscoe and Almirola scored top tens, but Briscoe certainly would have wanted more as he was leading the race before J.J. Yeley wrecked on lap 344 to bring out the final caution.

“Having a two-second lead and just kind of riding trying to maintain that two-second lead, I thought our car was really, really good at that point,” Briscoe stated. “Even with the caution, I thought we were going to be okay, and then I thought we were going to stay out, and then at the end, it looked like more guys were going to come down pit road, so we decided to come down with them. Obviously, Monday morning quarterback. It’s a lot easier to say you should have stayed out, but we didn’t. We win and lose as a team.”

Larson’s team-mate Chase Elliott finished tenth in his first race since Fontana in February after missing six weeks with a fractured tibia.

“Just having him a part of the debrief after practice and qualifying again was nice,” said Larson. “He always brings something a little different to the comments between all four of us.”

Race results