The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season heads to Martinsville Speedway this Sunday as fans get ready to see the final four drivers competing for this year’s title advancing to Phoenix after battling it out on ‘The Paperclip’.
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Martinsville is the quintessential stock car racing short track, which promotes close-quarters bullring-style racing with fans surrounding the track, making for a spectacular event not only from a spectator’s standpoint, but also from the driver’s and team’s.
Championship Four challenger Denny Hamlin recently shared his thoughts on where the track stands in the grand scheme of NASCAR’s track types. During a typical season, the sport visits a variety, from superspeedways to intermediates to road courses, each with its own set of challenges. Different styles of track often see a different driver pool excel at it, for example, Shane van Gisbergen‘s domination of the road course genre.
Martinsville Speedway is one place where Hamlin thinks that these crests and troughs of performance specific to track style are equalized to an extent. He elaborated on an episode of his podcast and said, “It’s a fair indicator of strength of team and driver. It’s got a little bit more variability because sometimes the restarts can get outta control.”
“It depends on how many of these guys are up front in the first couple rows if we do have a restart inside 20-30 laps. But I think it’s a fair indicator of strength of car and driver,” he added, referencing the 0.5-mile-long venue’s often chaotic ends to races, which especially holds true for junior series such as Trucks.
With the likes of Hamlin himself, who is excellent at superspeedway racing, to Kyle Larson, who has evident intermediate speed, it remains to be seen who can conquer the bullring this coming Sunday as drivers fight for the final two spots in the Final 4.
Larson and Bell will be battling each other for points all day long, whereas those below the cut, namely drivers like Ryan Blaney and William Byron, will be looking to win their way into the finale.
It is interesting to note that, except for Joey Logano and Chase Elliott, all Final 4 contenders, including the ones already locked in, have won at some point at the track in the Next Gen era. Although Briscoe, who is already locked in with his win last Sunday, has also not won at Martinsville, it seems like the last thing on the No. 19 team’s mind right now. The race goes live on Sunday, October 26, 2025, at 2:00 pm ET on NBC.
