RIDGEWAY, VA.: Zane Smith not only boasts a season best two race victories in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series this season but arrives at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway for Thursday night’s Blu-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 200 (8 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) as the most recent winner at the famed half-mile track.
And even with those confidence-building credentials, the driver of the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford can expect a busy night on track. There are six former winners in the field, including Martinsville’s all-time truck series best Johnny Sauter, who has four race wins. This will mark the former series champion’s first race this season since a 34th place finish in the Daytona season-opener
Another former series champion Matt Crafton brings a pair of wins as does Kyle Busch, who will drive his team’s No. 51 Toyota this week. Grant Enfinger (2020), and John Hunter Nemechek (2018) join Smith as the other former race winners.
The 24-year-old Nemechek, last year’s regular season champion, could stand a good dose of Martinsville magic. After an uncharacteristically rough start to the 2022 season – three finishes of 24th or worse in the opening three races – Nemechek finished runner-up in the most recent race at Austin and is a former winner at Martinsville with a pair of runner-up efforts at the half-miler as well.
Chandler Smith, who earned a career first victory at Las Vegas last month, holds a 15-point advantage atop the championship standings over reigning series champ Ben Rhodes. Stewart Friesen is 23 points back and Smith and Tanner Gray are tied, 31 points off the lead. Last year’s regular season champion, Nemechek, is ranked eighth – with only a single top-10 in a slower-than-usual season start.
This season, the truck series will only race at Martinsville this Spring weekend instead of the traditional Fall date. And it marks the first true short track event of 2022. More typically, Martinsville is a high-contact venue, but drivers say they aren’t necessarily sure how the new early-stop on the schedule will play out.
“I don’t know how it will be this year,’’ Smith said. “Martinsville is always crazy, but I feel like we’ve seen the past few years that it’s been the transfer race to get to the Final Four, so I feel like that really made the aggression level really high there at the time. Going back and watching film of the night race in 2020, it was ugly how aggressive it got and that was my first time ever at Martinsville, so I was little gun-shy, but I was in a must-win situation last year and we pulled it off.
“I just feel like that place has been good to me and it fits me and I always look forward to Martinsville week.’
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service
