Tag: STP 500

  • Larson Talks About Car Wreck after Fontana Race

    Larson Talks About Car Wreck after Fontana Race

    MARTINSVILLE, Va. — For most drivers, the post-race routine — if it doesn’t include talking to the media — is getting into a vehicle and heading back to Charlotte via land vehicle or airplane and nothing more. For race winner Kyle Larson, however, his post-race departure involved a collision.

    He was heading to the airport when a driver ran a red light and hit him. He believes the person who hit him was one of the traffic coordinators.

    “I don’t think he realized that they picked the cones up from the side where we were coming from,” Larson said. “I don’t think he expected anybody to be coming from where we were and he just darted out in the intersection.”

    Larson made contact with him in his right-front, but was able to veer slightly before contact. So, as he put it, “it honestly didn’t even hurt that bad, or at all, really.”

    “Our Chevy Suburban was good. The hood was buckled and the left front was messed up. The tow was out of it quite a bit,” Larson added. “But, that guys truck, the right front was not a part of it anymore. So, it is a funny story. Just the irony of it, I guess, having a near perfect weekend and a quarter-mile from the track to get in a car accident.”

    Asked if the person who hit him knew who he was, Larson said he didn’t “think he did. But, once the cops showed up, I think he realized who I was. And it was pretty funny.” He was asked if the cops realized who he was, he said “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that was cool. They were quick about it, too.”

  • Hamlin Fastest in First Cup Practice at Martinsville

    Hamlin Fastest in First Cup Practice at Martinsville

    MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Denny Hamlin topped the chart in first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway.

    The driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was the fastest with a time of 19.879 and a speed of 95.256 mph. Kyle Busch was second in his No. 18 Gibbs Toyota with a time of 19.920 and a speed of 95.060 mph. Kyle Larson was third in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.939 and a speed of 94.970 mph. Ryan Newman was fourth in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.952 and a speed of 94.908 mph. Jamie McMurray rounded out the top-five in his No. 1 Ganassi Chevrolet with a time of 19.956 and a speed of 94.889 mph.

    Joey Logano, who ran the eighth-fastest single lap, posted the fastest 10 consecutive lap average at a speed of 94.749 mph.

    Daniel Suarez locked his brakes entering Turn 3 and backed his car into the wall, forcing his team to roll out their backup car.

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  • Strong Run Could Bring Momentum for Allmendinger

    Strong Run Could Bring Momentum for Allmendinger

    Sunday’s second-place run in the STP 500 at Martinsville could bring much-needed success for A.J. Allmendinger and his No. 47 JTG/Daughtery Racing Chevrolet. The run comes fresh on the heels of a solid effort at California two weeks ago when Allmendinger ran in the top-10 most of the day and finished eighth. A lot of this can be attributed to the recent addition of Randall Burnett as Crew Chief, replacing Brian Burns in the off-season.

    In his first six starts as a Sprint Cup Crew Chief, Burnett has helped bring the team one top-five and two top-10s, and as if to further prove that his union with Allmendinger could pay dividends, the No. 47 team is currently sitting in 12th in the points standings. Of course, that could change over the year, but with the exception of a season-worst 27th-place run at Atlanta, the team has been improving on a weekly basis.

    Following Sunday’s race, Allmendinger said, regarding his performance, “You know, Randall Burnett, first-year crew chief, Ernie Cope coming aboard, they’ve made a huge difference.  My crew chief last year, Brian Burns, kind of going down back to his engineering role and Tony Palmer, that was the engineer last year, being kind of the second race engineer, everybody has just embraced their roles.  It’s made this team a lot of fun to be around.

    With his steady rate of improvement, this does not look like it’s going to stop anytime soon. That’s not saying Allmendinger is a plausible threat to win Texas on Saturday, but the team has been quietly marching forward with consistent runs in the top-half of the field and could eventually break through in a big way in 2016.

    All he has to do is keep his cool and keep up with these strong showings. They’ve shown that short tracks and road courses can be their strong suits this year, so if they repeat their Martinsville performance (and if Allmendinger can get some of his luck on the road courses back from 2014), they’ll be due for another Chase appearance this year. They have the strength, Allmendinger has the ability, and Burnett has the chemistry with the team to make it happen. They just need to keep building momentum.

    They have the strength, Allmendinger has the ability, and Burnett has the chemistry with the team to make it happen. They just need to keep building momentum.

  • Rowdy Takes a Bow in Martinsville

    Rowdy Takes a Bow in Martinsville

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– One clock wasn’t enough for Kyle Busch this weekend because he dominated and scored a second grandfather clock at the Virginia paperclip.

    The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led 352 of the 500 laps on his way to scoring the victory in the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway. It’s his 35th career victory in the Sprint Cup Series and first at Martinsville.

    “I’d say it certainly helps when you get to run other divisions and that’s why I do it to pay off on Sundays,” Busch said in victory lane. “It doesn’t work every single weekend, but it works more times than it doesn’t, so can’t say enough about everyone at KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) for giving me a great piece yesterday to help me learn, teach me some more things about Martinsville that I didn’t already know in 30 other prior starts. I can’t say enough about this whole JGR team on this side. This M&M’s Camry was awesome in practice yesterday. We had a really good car through practice and Adam (Stevens, crew chief) made some really good adjustments overnight to keep us where we need to be in order to run up front all day, led a lot of laps, probably led the most laps there and to win here in Martinsville is pretty cool – finally get to take a clock home. A lot of people said I didn’t deserve yesterday – maybe I don’t – but I certainly got one today.”

    AJ Allmendinger brought his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet home to a runner-up finish.

    “Well, I was hoping for one more spot for a culmination. But, I passed Jimmie Johnson like five times at Martinsville; that’s pretty cool! I can’t thank everybody on this team enough, especially (team owners) Tad and Jodi Geschickter. They put a lot of effort into this team. We weren’t where we wanted to be about six months ago. We brought in so many people who stepped up to embrace their new roles. I can’t thank all our sponsors enough.”

    Kyle Larson rounded out the podium in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. Austin Dillon finished fourth in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-five in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford.

    “It was a good Martinsville race,” Keselowski said. “We had a lot of speed with the Miller Lite Ford on the long runs, but just not quite enough on the short runs to make anything of the Gibbs cars. They were really strong all day. All in all, I’m really proud of my team. We’re starting to get to this place where we’re real consistent and can run up front and that’s a good feeling.”

    Carl Edwards finished sixth in his No. 19 JGR Toyota. Brian Vickers finished seventh in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet followed by Paul Menard who led 10 laps on his way to an eighth-place finish in his No. 27 RCR Chevrolet. Jimmie Johnson finished ninth in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet while Ryan Newman rounded out the top-10 in his No. 31 RCR Chevrolet.

    Pole-sitter Joey Logano led 21 laps, but fell way off early in the race, was busted for an uncontrolled tire and recovered for an 11th-place finish.

    “It was frustrating,” said Logano. “You want to go out there and win for sure and we just missed it. The first run was just absolutely awful to go down a lap from the lead, so we fought to get our car better, which we did, and then we over adjusted and came back and over adjusted on the way back, and then we had a pit road penalty. I think we know where we missed it, but we didn’t have the tools to fix what we needed to fix. Once the race starts a lot of times your hands are tied because you only have a certain amount of adjustments on your car or even on pit stops that we could fix what our problem was.

    “We’ve just got to back and learn from our mistakes and learn from what happened today. It seems like this tire kind of threw us for a loop today, or at least for our car.”

    Matt Kenseth led 45 laps and restarted the race second on the final restart, but was unable to get to the bottom and finished 15th. Despite leading 72 laps, Kevin Harvick was a non-factor toward the end as he finished 17th.

    The race lasted three hours, 17 minutes and two seconds at an average speed of 80.088 mph. There were 11 lead changes among five different drivers and eight cautions for 51 laps. Nineteen cars finished on the lead lap and three failed to finish.

    “We had a part failure with a part that typically doesn’t break, so I’m not sure,” said Aric Almirola after finishing 40th. “Doug (Yates) will go back and investigate it and I’m sure they’ll figure something out so it won’t ever happen again. It was a disappointing end to our day. We had an okay STP Ford Fusion. We were making it better and were probably a 15th-place car. Walking out of the track now, I certainly would have taken a 15th-place finish because this is gonna put us in a pretty big hole.”

    Harvick retains the points lead after Martinsville followed by Johnson (-4), Kyle Busch (-5), Edwards (-14) and Logano (-24), to round out the top five.

    Complete Results NSCS STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway:

    1. (7) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 500.
    2. (6) AJ Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 500.
    3. (17) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 500.
    4. (29) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 500.
    5. (11) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 500.
    6. (25) Carl Edwards, Toyota, 500.
    7. (3) Brian Vickers, Chevrolet, 500.
    8. (4) Paul Menard, Chevrolet, 500.
    9. (24) Jimmie Johnson, Chevrolet, 500.
    10. (5) Ryan Newman, Chevrolet, 500.
    11. (1) Joey Logano, Ford, 500.
    12. (14) Greg Biffle, Ford, 500.
    13. (23) Kurt Busch, Chevrolet, 500.
    14. (21) Dale Earnhardt Jr, Chevrolet, 500.
    15. (9) Matt Kenseth, Toyota, 500.
    16. (28) Danica Patrick, Chevrolet, 500.
    17. (19) Kevin Harvick, Chevrolet, 500.
    18. (16) Martin Truex Jr, Toyota, 500.
    19. (12) * Ryan Blaney #, Ford, 500.
    20. (10) Chase Elliott #, Chevrolet, 499.
    21. (22) David Ragan, Toyota, 499.
    22. (2) Kasey Kahne, Chevrolet, 499.
    23. (15) Jamie McMurray, Chevrolet, 499.
    24. (27) Michael McDowell, Chevrolet, 498.
    25. (30) Clint Bowyer, Chevrolet, 497.
    26. (26) Brian Scott #, Ford, 496.
    27. (32) Trevor Bayne, Ford, 496.
    28. (33) Landon Cassill, Ford, 495.
    29. (35) Matt DiBenedetto, Toyota, 495.
    30. (31) * Cole Whitt, Chevrolet, 495.
    31. (18) Casey Mears, Chevrolet, 494.
    32. (13) Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Ford, 494.
    33. (36) Chris Buescher #, Ford, 491.
    34. (34) Regan Smith, Chevrolet, 491.
    35. (38) Michael Annett, Chevrolet, 490.
    36. (37) Joey Gase(i), Ford, 490.
    37. (40) * Reed Sorenson, Chevrolet, 490.
    38. (39) * Josh Wise, Chevrolet, Engine, 326.
    39. (8) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, Accident, 221.
    40. (20) Aric Almirola, Ford, Engine, 206.

     

  • Joey Logano Overdue for Martinsville Win

    Joey Logano Overdue for Martinsville Win

    Going into Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville, Joey Logano is without a doubt the most overdue driver for a Martinsville win. Starting on the pole for Sunday’s event, Logano has four top-fives and five top-10s, three of those coming in his last four starts there.

    Last fall at Martinsville, Logano led a race-high 207 laps before an accident sidelined his race as well as his championship hopes. The culprit of the accident was none other than Matt Kenseth, in retribution for Logano dumping him just two weeks before at Kansas. If it weren’t for the accident, Logano would have already had a Grandfather clock in his trophy case (and maybe a Sprint Cup championship trophy as well) heading into the STP 500.

    A lot of hype has centered around that incident going into Sunday’s race, but it’s safe to say that nothing of that caliber should happen. Logano has led 414 laps in his last four starts at Martinsville and aside from winning three straight poles at the track, he also has started in the top-10 in the last six races there, with a sixth-place starting effort in October 2013 being his lowest Martinsville start since joining Team Penske.

    If that’s not enough, Logano also recorded his first Camping World Truck Series win at Martinsville in the Spring 2015 event, beating Matt Crafton by .431 seconds after leading 150 of 258 laps. He’s become a Martinsville expert at Penske, and he continues to improve and gain closer to that first win at the Virginia paperclip. It’s not a matter of if he’ll win there; it’s a matter of when, and Sunday looks like his likeliest chance at victory.

    See video: https://youtu.be/IVKWClMhZGs

    With an average finish of 10.5 in 14 starts, plus zero DNFs, Martinsville has become one of Logano’s best tracks on the circuit, and he has become something of a short track master. A win on Sunday would only serve to solidify that, as he has already won at Bristol and Richmond, and it is time for the No. 22 to cross the finish line first and get one of Martinsville’s famous clock trophies.

  • Kyle Larson Fastest in Final Sprint Cup Practice

    Kyle Larson Fastest in Final Sprint Cup Practice

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Kyle Larson topped the chart in the final Sprint Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway.

    The driver of the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet was the fastest in the final practice session with a time of 19.835 and a speed of 95.468 mph followed by Kyle Busch who was second in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota with a time of 19.862 and a speed of 95.338 mph. Brian Vickers was third in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.869 and a speed of 95.304 mph. Ryan Newman was fourth in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.869 and a speed of 95.304 mph while Martin Truex Jr. rounded out the top-five in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota with a time of 19.874 and a speed of 95.280 mph.

    Jimmie Johnson was sixth in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Denny Hamlin was seventh in his No. 11 JGR Toyota. Matt Kenseth was eighth in his No. 20 JGR Toyota. Kasey Kahne was ninth in his No. 5 HMS Chevrolet. Ryan Blaney rounded out the top-10 in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

    Johnson posted the fastest 10 consecutive lap average at a speed of 94.866 mph. Larson was second at a speed of 94.842 mph and Truex was third at a speed of 94.836 mph.

    With practice and qualifying in the books, all that remains is to run the STP 500 tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. on FS1.

    Complete NSCS First Practice Results at Martinsville Speedway

    Complete NSCS Second Practice Results at Martinsville Speedway

    Complete NSCS Final Practice Results at Martinsville Speedway:

    Martinsville Final Practice Results 04-02-16

     

     

  • Kasey Kahne Fastest in Second Sprint Cup Practice

    Kasey Kahne Fastest in Second Sprint Cup Practice

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Kasey Kahne topped the chart in second Sprint Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway.

    The driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was the fastest in the second practice session with a time of 19.710 and a speed of 96.073 mph. Ryan Newman was second in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.756 and a speed of 95.849 mph. Martin Truex Jr. was third in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota with a time of 19.788 and a speed of 95.694 mph. Brian Vickers was fourth in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.795 and a speed of 95.661 mph. Paul Menard rounded out the top-five in his No. 27 RCR Chevrolet with a time of 19.800 and a speed of 95.636 mph.

    Dale Earnhardt Jr. was sixth in his No. 88 HMS Chevrolet. Casey Mears was seventh in his No. 13 Germain Racing Chevrolet. Matt Kenseth was eighth in his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Denny Hamlin was ninth in his No. 11 JGR Toyota. Clint Bowyer rounded out the top-10 in his No. 15 HScott Motorsports Chevrolet.

    Vickers posted the fastest 10 consecutive lap average at a speed of 95.336 mph. Newman was second at a speed of 95.128. Kyle Larson, who was 15th in practice in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, was third at a speed of 95.003 mph.

    The Sprint Cup Series will be back on track this afternoon at 1 p.m. for final practice.

    Complete NSCS Second Practice Results at Martinsville Speedway:

    Martinsville NSCS Second Practice 04-02-16

  • Blaney: Bubba’s First Mistake was Being a Vols Fan

    Blaney: Bubba’s First Mistake was Being a Vols Fan

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Critiquing Bubba’s performance with the Vols, Ryan Blaney said his first mistake was “being a fan of the Vols.”

    During his media availability at Martinsville Speedway yesterday, the driver of the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford was asked if he had gotten around to analyzing Darrell Wallace Jr.’s performance with the Tennessee Volunteers when he was practicing with the team in Knoxville, Tennessee the previous week.

    “The first thing he made a mistake on was being a fan of the Vols,” said Blaney, who is an adamant fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes. “I haven’t critiqued him yet. I saw a video of him completely miss a pass. I don’t think he got a hand on the ball or it went right through his hands, so that was funny – how terrible of an athlete he is (laughing). No, he’s a pretty good athlete. That’s cool. I saw him do that and I’m like, ‘Man, I’d like to do that with Ohio State,’ so maybe that will kind of sway me to go do it, but I haven’t critiqued him yet. I haven’t given him too hard of a time for it.”

    During the session, he also spoke of what it was like for the Wood Brothers to be back at the track for the first time since 2011.

    “It’s nice to be back at Martinsville with the Wood Brothers team. It’s nice to be back at pretty much their home track. Stuart, Virginia is only 20 miles away from here, not even, so it’s cool to be back here and with those guys and kind of have everybody out and see everything. I think Glenn (Wood) is gonna be able to make it on Sunday, which it’s really gonna be nice to get him to another race, so hopefully, that will go well for him.”

    Speaking on his two top-10 finishes this season, Blaney said he “set a goal at the beginning of the year to run all the laps and that hasn’t come true, so that goal is kind of out the window. It’s good to have a couple top-10’s and have some strong runs. I always say there are some races you wish you could take back, like Atlanta and Fontana a couple of weeks ago. We blew a tire, but those are just problems you have to minimize and it stinks; you have two of them early off in the year, but you try to learn from them as much as you can and try to grow from them and try to not have those happen again. We’ll do our best to try to make that happen, but it’s nice to know we have fast race cars.”

    “We’ve had fairly good cars every single weekend,” he continued, “and we’re just getting better every single weekend. As we work together, as this team kind of bonds – this is a fairly new team. We brought on a handful of new guys in the beginning of the season. We kept most of the Wood Brothers personnel that has been there for a long time, but we brought in some new people just to help out with the full-time gig because it’s a lot more work. They’re just kind of getting acclimated to each other. They do a great job of working together already, but just the more they work together the stronger that relationship is gonna be and I think it will get a lot smoother from there on out, but it’s been a good start to the year so far.”

  • Logano on the pole for Martinsville

    Logano on the pole for Martinsville

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Joey Logano will lead the field to the green flag on Sunday at the Virginia paperclip.

    The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford scored the pole for the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway with a time of 19.513 and a speed of 97.043 mph.

    “Todd does a great job with this Shell/Pennzoil Ford,” Logano said. “I get to drive this thing and it’s so much fun every time we come here to Martinsville, especially in qualifying. We’ve got to figure out the race part. We haven’t got that grandfather clock yet, but qualifying is something that Todd and I have wrapped our heads around and really understand what we have to do inside the race car and outside the race car. I couldn’t be more proud of these guys. I say all the time that Martinsville is the most important track to start up front and that’s when you’ve got to come here and really show what you’ve got. Everyone back at the shop, the way they build these cars, they did a great job for us today.”

    This is his 15th career pole in the Sprint Cup Series and third-consecutive at Martinsville. He joins Jeff Gordon as the only drivers to accomplish this feat.

    Kasey Kahne will start second in his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.515 and a speed of 97.033 mph.

    “It feels good,” Kahne said. “The car was really fast, this Great Clips Chevrolet. The guys did a nice job in practice and in qualifying. I just kept getting better with my laps…The car is fine. Just let me get my laps a little better.

    “I feel good about it (the car). We had a top-10 here the last race, last year; with the backup car because I crashed it in qualifying and this car is better than our primary car was last time.”

    Brian Vickers will start third in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.549 and a speed of 96.864 mph. Paul Menard will start fourth in his No. 27 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.551 and a speed of 96.854 mph as Ryan Newman rounds out the top-five in his No. 31 RCR Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.575 and a speed of 96.736 mph.

    AJ Allmendinger will start sixth in his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet. Kyle Busch will start seventh in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

    “We were okay, we’ve just been lacking a little bit overall all day and that’s just kind of what we missed it by there,” Busch said. “Overall, we have decent speed, we just need some more.”

    Denny Hamlin will start eighth in his No. 11 JGR Toyota. Matt Kenseth will start ninth in his No. 20 JGR Toyota. Chase Elliott will round out the top-10 in his No. 24 HMS Chevrolet.

    Brad Keselowski will start 11th in his No. 2 Penske Ford as Ryan Blaney rounds out the 12 drivers that made the final round of qualifying.

    “It’s nice to get to the third round, but it didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Blaney said. “We didn’t really have good speed that last round, but it’s nice to get a decent starting spot. It’s on the outside, though, so that kind of stinks, but we’ll see how our car is tomorrow.”

    Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who just missed the cut into the final round after getting bumped from the transfer spot in the closing seconds of round 2, will start 13th.

    “We just got a little bit tight on the lap that I thought was our best lap and I thought it could have been a little bit better,” Stenhouse said. “We didn’t need much, but I was happy with the Fastenal Ford. This is our best qualifying effort at Martinsville. It will give us a good starting spot for Sunday’s race.”

    Carl Edwards will start 25th after not making it out of round 1.

    “It’s frustrating for me because these JGR Toyota’s are so fast and for me to run 25th is pretty frustrating,” Edwards said. “I think we’ll race well and I ran enough laps that I got a pretty good view of what race true will be like.”

    NSCS Complete Starting Lineup:

    Martinsville Startng-Lineup-page-001

     

  • Brian Vickers Fastest in First Practice

    Brian Vickers Fastest in First Practice

    MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Brian Vickers posted the fastest time in first Sprint Cup Series practice at Martinsville Speedway.

    The driver of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet was fastest in the first practice session with a time of 19.485 and a speed of 97.182 mph. Denny Hamlin was second in his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota with a time of 19.500 and a speed of 97.108 mph. Joey Logano was third in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford with a time of 19.504 and a speed of 97.088 mph. Ryan Newman was fourth in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.511 and a speed of 97.053 mph. Kyle Larson rounded out the top-five in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet with a time of 19.517 and a speed of 97.023 mph.

    Kasey Kahne was sixth in his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Ryan Blaney was seventh in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. Matt Kenseth was eighth in his No. 20 JGR Toyota. Paul Menard was ninth in his No. 27 RCR Chevrolet. Jamie McMurray rounded out the top-10 in his No. 1 CGR Chevrolet.

    Larson posted the fastest 10 consecutive lap average at a speed of 94.369 mph.

    Trevor Bayne crashed his car after locking up the brakes going into turn 1.

    “We had a really good car in race true and the long run,” Bayne said. “It was lacking short-run speed and I felt like I was really being held up on my brakes. I was having a lot of rear wheel hop getting into the corner. We were giving up two to three-tenths into both corners and I tried to just push the braking zone a little bit more and it started wheel-hopping really bad. There was nothing I could do about it. Once it started bouncing, I tried to save it and once it got backwards stood in the gas and it just backed in. You never want to tear one up, especially not in practice, but maybe that rear wheel-hop won’t be in our backup car and we can go qualify OK.”

    The team opted to roll out the backup car. Because this took place prior to qualifying, the driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford won’t be required to drop to the rear of the field.

    The Sprint Cup Series will be back on track later this evening for qualifying at 4:15.

    NSCS Complete Practice 1 Results – Martinsville Speedway

    Martinsville NSCS-Pract-1-page-001