2014 Martinsville - STP 500 - Pre Race Thread

I would never want to live near a sporting arena or any such place.
 
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dpkimmel2001 said:
Pit road w/timing lines.

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Great. I can see it now. Gordon is gonna hit annet as he is going in & Gordon is coming out. Hopefully Almirola & Annet will go down a lap early so Gordon will have free space infront & behind to pull in/out of his pit.
 
I absolutely despise this track and wonder why the cup boys race here. There are other tracks that should be used like Richmond or Rockingham. Why they race here is a mystery to me.
 
ElliottFan said:
I absolutely despise this track and wonder why the cup boys race here. There are other tracks that should be used like Richmond or Rockingham. Why they race here is a mystery to me.
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this kind of summarizes martinsville appeal:

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...tona-international-bristol-motor-stock-cars/2

4 - Martinsville Speedway
Martinsville, Va.
0.526-mile oval, turns banked 12 degrees
Bigger isn't necessarily better -- as illustrated by Bristol -- and neither is faster, as is perennially proved at Martinsville. It's NASCAR's oldest, smallest, slowest track. Yet lap for lap, no track on the tour guarantees more relentless action and excitement. And no track, in any form of racing in the world, is harder on cars. Very early in the race, the centers of the wheels begin to emit red glows; these are the brakes overheating from the enormous stress.

Rather than a true oval, Martinsville is more like two little dragstrips (the straightaways) running parallel, connected by two little hairpins (the two tight sets of turns). So flying down the straights and then standing on the brakes into the corners is standard procedure. Some drivers actually try to slow down by bumping into other cars when they can, just to try to conserve brakes; this, of course, is highly unpopular with their peers, and so leaving Martinsville mad is also common for drivers.

Great finishes aren't the point here. Great laps are -- lap after lap after lap. And any and every car in the field is capable of joining in the action at any given moment. It's a constant NASCAR version of bumper cars at the amusement park, which makes Martinsville the only pure throwback to the origins of what made NASCAR racing appealing. So the finishes are anticlimactic here, merely the point at which officials put a stop to the free-for-all.

Never, on any lap, is the leader assured of leading the next lap. That's because of the high risk of spinning out in the almost supernaturally tricky Turn 2. If the leader doesn't get bumped from behind (which occurs with some regularity), then it's entirely possible he'll spin out on his own as he stands on the gas out of the slow and slippery little corner.

Built by the late Clay Earles, a legendary Virginia gentleman in his deference to women (and notoriously confrontational at times in his run-ins with men), Martinsville opened to NASCAR racing in 1949 as a dirt track and was paved in 1956. Earles turned it into a sort of Augusta National of race tracks, with blooming dogwoods, roses and azaleas at the spring races, and lovely families of ducks and ducklings on picturesque ponds. But Earles' knack for gardening sometimes had a price. In the 1950s, Earles decreed that two outhouses in the infield weren't fit for women to view from the stands, and ordered them covered with climbing roses. Trouble was, bees began to swarm the roses, and men were seen dashing out of the outhouses, gathering up their trousers as they fled.
 
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I have a feeling that with the top 8 starters we may some serious racing right at the drop of the green.
 
ChexOrWrex said:
Not 1:00
Not 1:10
Not 1:15

1:13.

Who sets these times
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NASCAR. All of the prerace activities dictate when these races start. Only time it changes is due to the weather. There's a lot of stuff that happens leading up to a race each week at the track. They've pretty much have it down to a science.
 
So from what I've read it seems like the weather should clear out this afternoon.. but who knows... its their job to make us stay tuned in so......
 
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