Martinsville, the Oldest and the Toughest.
By: Drew Hierwarter
You want history? Martinsville has it. You want close racing? Martinsville has it. You want atmosphere? Martinsville has it all. The little paper clip shaped half mile just outside of tiny Martinsville, Virginia has been dishing up exciting stock car races since before there was a NASCAR. The track was dirt when it opened in 1947. Fonty Flock won Martinsville’s first NASCAR race in a modified. It wasn’t until 1949 that NASCAR ran its first race there in what would become today’s Sprint Cup Series, a 100 miler won by Red Byron driving a 1949 Oldsmobile.
In addition to being the shortest track NASCAR races on, Martinsville is one of the toughest. Jeff Burton says that 500 laps at Martinsville feels a lot longer. “It’s long, and it really is one of the hardest races that we do,” Burton said, “Martinsville is both a physical and emotional race. I think it’s the ‘longest feeling’ race that we run all year.” Burton was a 1997 winner at Martinsville.
Martinsville requires the best a driver and car can give and only the very best have won there. Richard Petty won there fifteen times, more than anyone else. Between 1963 and 1966, Fred Lorenzen won five out of seven races, with four of them in a row. Darrell Waltrip was an eleven time Martinsville winner. In more recent times, Jeff Gordon has won there seven times and Hendrick Motorsports cars have won eight of the last ten races there, with only Rusty Wallace in 2004, and Tony Stewart in 2006 spoiling the perfect record.
This weekend the little town of Martinsville will swell from its normal 15,000 people to more than four times that many as all 65,000 seats will be filled and many hundreds more will populate the garage and infield. Martinsville Speedway represents the history of NASCAR and is a throwback to what stock car racing is all about. Veteran radio broadcaster and auto racing journalist Hal Hamrick was there at that first race; “Martinsville is the very essence, the very backbone of what the thing is all about. That’s why you have the big crowds every year. The drivers have to truly master the racetrack at Martinsville, instead of just driving the car around. It’s one of the premium tracks.”
Check your local listings and be sure to catch the NASCAR “Goody’s Cool Orange 500″ from Martinsville this Sunday.