Now that was short track racing
It was not the best race we have ever witnessed in NASCAR, or at Martinsville for that matter, but it included some hard-nose short track wrestling that we missed last week at Bristol.
Throughout the race, there was beating and banging all over the track. It did not matter if you were battling for the lead or for the twenty-third position.
Speaking of battling for the lead, the four-car battle for the lead that included Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer, and Jimmie Johnson was attention-grabbing. Gordon was beating on Hamlin’s back bumper, while Bowyer and Johnson joined the fray. Gordon took the lead, Hamlin took it back, and Bowyer and Johnson swapped positions. It was an exciting battle.
Right in front of this battle, you had drivers desperate to remain on the lead lap. Bobby Labonte and Reed Sorenson engaged in a duel while trying to stay in front of the leaders.
Eventually, it became a two-horse race between defending race winner Hamlin and six-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson. On the lap 457 restart, Hamlin swiftly swerved to the inside of Johnson in turn one. He took the lead and held it until lap 484. That is when Johnson gave Hamlin a little bump, sending Hamlin up the track and into the runner up position. Hamlin then had to fend off third place Tony Stewart.
“I think he was trying to not leave me a lot of room, which is what you do, and before I knew it, I was up on the curb and we had made contact and were sliding sideways. It certainly wasn’t something intentional. I was just trying to get in there and get the win,” said Johnson in victory lane on the 25th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports’ first win.
Hamlin responded by saying, “We tried our best to hold him off. You fight for every inch around this racetrack, and he got the better of us. If the roles were reversed, I’d do the same thing, and believe me, I will if it ever comes back around.”
Not only was the battle for the lead fun to watch, but you had Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr leaning on each other for the seventh position, a battle that Newman ultimately won. A few laps later, Newman and Mark Martin exchanged blows while battling for the sixth position, another battle that Newman won.
Newman and his Stewart Haas Racing teammate Tony Stewart finished sixth and third.
You had lap cars fighting with top ten cars. For instance, David Stremme, who was a lap down, leaned on David Reutimann, who had yet another solid performance. The contact sent Reutimann spinning around.
The typically mild-mannered Reutimann was incensed following the race.
“We just got run over by a lapped car that had his eyes rolled back in his head and ran over us for no reason. It’s disappointing when you run top ten all day and you don’t really touch anybody all day for Martinsville and then have somebody spin you out,” he said.
The Sprint Cup series heads to Texas Motor Speedway next week.
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Now that was short track racing
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