After last week's opening act in Bristol, NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow is back for an encore.
Martinsville Speedway is the scene of this week's Nextel Cup circus and like Bristol last Sunday, the historic Virginia venue is another rough-and-tumble short track.
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| Nobody knows Martinsville better than Jeff Gordon. (AP) |
But while the two are close in the length department, they couldn't be more different.
Bristol's towering banks of 36 degrees are the steepest on the circuit, higher than the mammoth Daytona and Talladega speedplants.
Martinsville, on the other hand, is as flat as a pancake, with only a six-degree bank in the tight turns of the paperclip-like speedway.
The layout and compact conditions make it one of the toughest stops on the schedule -- and a hard one to understand for many drivers.
"That's the track I had to work the hardest at to figure out and understand," said Jimmie Johnson, who won last October's Martinsville race. "I studied Jeff (Gordon's) data and talked to him and really tried to understand what he was doing there." Gordon would be a good driver to study for anyone trying to master Martinsville Speedway. The four-time series champion has visited victory lane seven times during his Martinsville career, the most of any active driver.
"One of the things I learned early on here is that you have to be patient in the way you drive this track," said Gordon. "The key is not to overdrive the corner. With a flat, sharp corner, it's very easy to drive too deep into the corner. When you do that, it just messes up the whole corner. It takes away your ability to roll through the center and drive straight up off the corner."
Simply surviving the early going of a 500-lap grind at Martinsville is paramount to having a chance at taking the checkered flag.
"The mindset at Martinsville is a lot like Bristol or at a road course: You try to stay out of trouble and survive until the last 100 laps, and then you go racin' to see who's gonna take home the trophy," said Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is winless in 14 career Martinsville Cup starts..
And as if racing at Martinsville isn't enough of a challenge, drivers and teams will also have to confront the new COT in its second race.
Like last week at Bristol, the COT will get another workout on a tough short track, which will provide another unique set of obstacles.
"I think it's going to be a bigger challenge," said Jeff Burton, last week's runner-up. "We had 12 hours or so of testing at Bristol and we don't have that at Martinsville. Testing with a new piece is very advantageous. I think racing at Martinsville will be a bigger challenge than racing at Bristol just because we don't have any information."
One of the criticisms heard from drivers last week at Bristol was the COT's tightness and how tough the new car was to turn. If the car displays that attribute again this week on the tight quarters of Martinsville, it will make things even tougher Sunday.
"You have to make the car roll through the tight corners, and keeping the brakes on the car the entire race is very important," said Kevin Harvick, a top-five finisher at Bristol. "However, with the Car of Tomorrow coming in, it is going to throw a small monkey wrench into the whole deal, but I think after our success at Bristol we will be just fine."
Martinsville might be a difficult track for some drivers, but others actually look forward to racing there, albeit for different reasons.
"If you have a car in the race that's not driving well and you have a bad qualifying run and a bad pit selection and you end up fighting the car all day, then a place like Martinsville becomes a very tough track," said Tony Stewart. "But that's also one of the reasons why when you do win there it means so much. Plus, their grandfather clock is one of the coolest trophies around."
