MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Christopher Bell arrives up at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway this weekend leading the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings for only the third time in his career – including two weeks in 2022 – and equipped with some very positive momentum as the series finishes a three-race Springtime short track run in the schedule.
Bell’s points-leading position comes after his victory last week in the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway dirt race, but he has been consistently good all season. His five top-five finishes through the opening eight races are tops in the series and his six top-10 finishes are tied with Alex Bowman for most in the series.
Not only is Bell, driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, currently pacing all the drivers in points, he returns to Martinsville for Sunday’s NOCO 400 (3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) as the most recent winner at the famous half-mile track, claiming the victory in the Playoff race there last October that put him into the Championship 4 Round for the first time in his career.
One driver Bell can expect to contend with on Sunday is perennial fan favorite and 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Chase Elliott, who returns to competition this week at Martinsville after missing six races while healing from a broken leg, suffered in a snowboarding accident.
Elliott’s medical clearance comes at a promising time in the schedule – Martinsville has certainly been a fine track for him historically speaking. The driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has nine top-10 finishes in 15 starts there including the 2020 Playoff victory and back-to-back runner-up finishes in this spring race in 2020 and 2021.
Elliott received a Playoff waiver from NASCAR which means he can still earn a position in the 2023 Playoffs if he wins a race and is high enough in the points standings. Even after missing a month and a half, he is only 42 points behind Legacy Motor Club rookie Noah Gragson in the standings.
Elliott will be contending for his first win of the season alongside a pair of equally motivated veterans – Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. – also hoping to earn their first points-paying trophies. And these two are the winningest active drivers at Martinsville.
Virginia’s Hamlin leads all drivers with five Martinsville wins. He has 23 top-10 finishes in 34 starts – an impressive 67.6 percent – and his 2,190 career laps led is easily tops among the competition. But Hamlin’s last win at the track was in 2015. And the driver of the No. 11 JGR Toyota has had only a pair of top-10 finishes this season, however, sixth-place efforts at California’s Auto Club Speedway and Atlanta.
Truex, who drives the No. 19 JGR Toyota, started the season with a win in the non-points paying Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum, but like his teammate Hamlin has only two top-10 finishes since; seventh-place efforts at Las Vegas and last week’s Bristol dirt race. Martinsville could be a reasonable place to expect a better outing. His three wins makes him second only to Hamlin in the current trophy haul. He’s got 15 top-10 finishes in 34 starts and led more than a thousand laps (1,016) in his career. He won in the 2020 and 2021 spring races but was 22nd and 20th in the two 2022 races at Martinsville.
Ross Chastain’s dramatic “Hail Melon” move on the final lap of last year’s Martinsville event launched him into NASCAR legendary status and also into the Championship 4 Round for the first time in his career. He essentially slammed his No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet against the outside wall and “floored it” driving around so quickly he set a track record speed and passed enough cars to earn a position in the Championship 4. Although NASCAR has since set rules in place that would disallow such a move now, Chastain enjoyed international celebrity status in the sport for his effort.
Both of his career top-10 finishes at the track came in 2023 – fifth place in the Spring race and fourth in the Fall race.
Practice for the NOCO 400 is Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET followed by Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 5:20 – both will be televised on FS2.
Source: Holly Cain/NASCAR Wire Service
