RIDGEWAY, VA.: In many ways it’s hard to believe the NASCAR Xfinity Series season is only seven weeks old with drivers already making strong championship bids and week after week of dramatic last lap action.
Friday’s Call 811 Before You Dig 250 at the half-mile Martinsville (Va.) Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is the first night-time short track offering of the year and adding to that excitement, NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be on the starting grid.
Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports team driver Josh Berry earned his first career victory in this race last year – holding off teammate Noah Gragson by .590-seconds. Gragson answered with a victory in the Fall race.
This season, the Xfinity Series will only race once in Martinsville adding a sense of urgency for those hoping to earn one of the sport’s most renowned trophies – a grandfather clock.
Veteran A.J. Allmendinger holds a 20-point lead over fellow 2022 race winners, Ty Gibbs and Gragson. The margin in the standings is dramatically different afterward with the defending race winner Barry 76 points back in fourth place and Justin Allgaier 87 points off in fifth place.
This race is the second round of Xfinity’s Dash 4 Cash incentive program with last week’s race winner Gibbs, Allmendinger, Sam Mayer and Riley Herbst eligible for the $100,000. The top finisher Friday night among these four drivers will take home the big check and the top four finishing – and eligible – drivers in the Martinsville race will be eligible for the Dash 4 Cash payout next week at Bristol, Tenn.
Martinsville is an interesting venue for the Xfinity Series. There have been only three series races held at the venerable track since 2006 – the two last year and one in 2020 won by current NASCAR Cup Series rookie Harrison Burton. There may not be a long list of former winners in the field, but there are a lot of motivated racers.
Gragson, 23, who won at Phoenix and has five top-five finishes in seven races this year, has to be considered the favorite at Martinsville. In three races, the driver of the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet has finished third, second and first and is coming off a dominant showing in the Fall leading 152 of 257 laps en route to that win.
Gibbs, 19, is coming off a dramatic win at Richmond, Va. last week, going door-to-door bumper-on-bumper with his teammate John Hunter Nemechek to take a series best third win of 2021. He led 114 laps, but it was an aggressive last lap move to get around Nemechek that landed the young star the big trophy. Three of this four top-10 finishes in 2022 have been wins. He has finishes of fourth and 27th in two Martinsville races.
The points-leader Allmendinger’s best Richmond finish is seventh last Fall, but the only time the driver of the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet has led laps at Martinsville were in that 2020 Fall race when he finished 26th. He was 13th and seventh in the two races last year.
Berry, 31, who is keeping the championship leaders in sight, has three top-five finishes this season in the No. 8 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, rebounding from a pair of disappointing showings at Atlanta (33rd) and Circuit of the Americas (27th) with a seventh place at Richmond last week.
Certainly, the eyes and hearts of fans will be on the sport’s perennially Most Popular Driver, Earnhardt, who will be driving his JRM team’s No. 88 Chevrolet. The 47-year old’s last NASCAR race was a one-off, 14th place finish at Richmond last year. The last time he raced at Martinsville was his 2017 final NASCAR Cup Series season. He earned a NASCAR Cup Series victory there in 2014 and had 18 top-10 finishes in 35 series starts.
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service
