Martinsville Speedway
Records
Date Series Driver Speed
9/22/96 Sprint Cup Race Jeff Gordon 82.00
10/23/05 Sprint Cup Qualifying Tony Stewart 98.083
7/22/06 Nationwide Race Kevin Harvick 61.00
7/22/06 Nationwide Qualifying Clint Bowyer 95.951
10/18/03 Camping World Truck Race Jon Wood 72.00
3/29/08 Camping World Truck Qualifying Jack Sprague 96.327
Race 4 of 25 on Camping World Truck circuit
Where:Martinsville Speedway, Ridgeway, VA
When: April 2, 2011 2:16 pm EDT
Laps:250
Track Length:0.526 miles
Race Length:132.00 miles
NO NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES RACE THIS WEEKEND
Sprint Cup Series
Upcoming Race Apr 3
Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500
Track Facts
Martinsville Speedway
Race Capsule
What: Race 6 of 36 on Sprint Cup circuit
Where: Martinsville Speedway, Ridgeway, VA
When: April 3, 2011 1:13 pm EDT
Laps: 500
Track Length: 0.526 miles
Race Length: 263.00 miles
Most Cup Wins (since 1975)
Darrell Waltrip: 11
Sprint Cup Date Race Name Pole Winner Race Winner Make Purse
3/29/10 Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 Kevin Harvick Denny Hamlin Toyota $4,935,846
10/24/10 TUMS Fast Relief 500 Denny Hamlin Denny Hamlin Toyota $4,886,673
3/29/09 Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 Jeff Gordon Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet $5,066,999
10/25/09 TUMS Fast Relief 500 Ryan Newman Denny Hamlin Toyota $5,012,362
3/30/08 Goody's Cool Orange 500 Jeff Gordon Denny Hamlin Toyota $5,027,520
10/19/08 TUMS QuikPak 500 Jimmie Johnson Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet $4,972,883
4/1/07 Goody's Cool Orange 500 Denny Hamlin Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet $4,929,787
10/21/07 Subway 500 Jeff Gordon Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet $4,872,371
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March 29, 2011 , MARTINSVILLE, Vir. - For Immediate Release
Dodge Motorsports NSCS Race Advance
Goody's Fast Relief 500
Martinsville Speedway
Sunday, April 3, 2011
DODGE AT MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY
• Dodge has 10 wins at Martinsville including three sweeps (1953, 1956 and 1975).
• Rusty Wallace posted the last Dodge win at Martinsville in the 2004 spring event, one of seven victories for Wallace at the .526-mile track.
• Kurt Busch (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge) won at Martinsville in 2002 prior to joining the Dodge Motorsports family.
• Busch is the only current Dodge driver to earn a pole at Martinsville Speedway (October 2006).
DODGE HISTORICAL DATA
• First Dodge NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Win: Lee Petty, 2/1/53, West Palm, Fla., 100 miles, .5-mile track.
• Last Dodge NASCAR Sprint Cup Win at Martinsville Speedway: Rusty Wallace, 4/28/04, Advanced Auto Parts 500, 68.169 mph avg. speed.
DODGE NEWS AND NOTES
• Dodge’s Kurt Busch dropped two positions to third-place in the 2011 NSCS driver standings after his 17th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway last weekend. Busch has not been outside the top-five all season.
THE DODGE BOYS
• Dodge has 207 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victories.
• Dodge’s most recent win came at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Kurt Busch led 252 of 400 laps en route to victory in the 2010 Coca-Cola 600.
• Dodge claimed two Sprint Cup victories in 2010.
• Dodge teams have posted 47 wins since the manufacturer’s return to NASCAR’s premier series in 2001 after being out of the sport since 1977.
• Dodge has posted wins each season since it’s return in 2001 including seven wins twice (2002 and 2006).
DID YOU KNOW
• In addition to Martinsville and Richmond, seven other Virginia tracks have hosted Sprint Cup events since the first “strictly stock”, now Sprint Cup, race in 1949.
• Kurt Busch’s win at the 2002 event at Martinsville was from the 36th starting position, the furthest back a race winner has started.
• The race winner has come from the first two rows in 60 of the 124 Sprint Cup races at Martinsville.
• The first NASCAR-sanctioned race at Martinsville was held in 1949. The first 500-lap event was in 1956.
• Kurt Busch’s best starting position this season was a second at Phoenix; he started third at Daytona.
FROM THE ENGINEER
"Every time the Sprint Cup Series visits Martinsville, we talk about the importance of brakes at the track with the tightest and slowest corners in NASCAR. It's a big job to slow down 3,450 pound cars 1000 times a race; it works the brake system to its limits. Now in 2011, there's a new lower fascia in the Sprint Cup Series and along with the new look, a new set of brake cooling ducts. Are they going to be enough to keep the brakes cool for 500 laps at Martinsville? We’ll find out Sunday." Howard Comstock, Dodge Motorsports Engineering
FROM THE CREW CHIEF
“The good thing about Martinsville is that you don’t have to worry about aerodynamics. It’s the shortest track we visit and it’s all about mechanical grip. In the short time Brad has been at Martinsville, he has shown a great ability to get around the place. Hopefully we can get qualifying in – which is never a guarantee during this weekend – so that we can get a good qualifying spot.” Paul Wolfe, Crew Chief, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• Dodge’s Brad Keselowski earned his only Sprint Cup pole at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2010.
2011 SPRINT CUP SERIES SEASON BEST
• Kurt Busch Start: 2nd – Phoenix
Finish: 5th – Daytona
• Brad Keselowski Start: 9th – Phoenix
Finish: 15th – Phoenix
• Robby Gordon Start: 30th – Daytona
Finish: 16th – Daytona
DODGE QUOTES
“I’ll be the first to admit that the Martinsville races have always been so challenging to me and that goes all the way back through my career. But ever since Steve Addington came aboard as our crew chief at the beginning of last season, things have really begun to turn for the better. Steve deserves so much credit for rallying the troops every week and having our team’s confidence level up for all of these races. I told him when he first joined the team that Martinsville was a weak track for me personally and he vowed back then that we’d work hard together in changing that. I think we’ve already made so much progress, but it’s a case of the numbers just not showing that.” Kurt Busch, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T
“The biggest thing for me going into my first race at Martinsville was that I tried not to get too intimidated by the track. There are a lot of top-tier drivers that have horror stories about their first race there. I came from a short-track background, racing at tough bullrings like Toledo and Auto City. I told myself that those tracks had fully-prepared me for racing at Martinsville and that I just needed to trust my abilities. We had two good racecars last year too, and that certainly helps. I’m really excited to get back to Martinsville this weekend because I learned a ton in those first two races that will help me this season.” Brad Keselowski, No 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T
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Dodge Motorsports Notes & Quotes - Kurt Busch Open Interview - Martinsville
April 1, 2011 , MARTINSVILLE, Va.
- KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T)
YOUR THIRD IN POINTS, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT MARTINSVILLE? “It’s been a nice solid start to our season. We had a little bit of a fumble last week, just missing the setup at California and struggling to a 17th-place finish. Overall, we’re happy with the way that the season has started. Now that we’re parked by the season standings order, it’s nice to be up front where the competitors are as far as the top-five guys who are going to be the top candidates as the season progresses. It will be exciting to be in the mix. This track here at Martinsville always challenges everybody. It seems like a few guys like Denny Hamlin or Jimmie Johnson have definitely had a handle on it better than most groups. So we’ll have to challenge ourselves to get into that elite category this weekend and see what we can do. It’s an interesting strategy as far as practice goes today with all of our practice being on Friday and coming in tomorrow for just two laps of qualifying. We’ll have to adapt to that the best way that we can.”
HOW EASY IS IT TO BUZZ THE TIRES COMING OFF THE CORNERS HERE AT MARTINSVILLE? “It’s pretty easy to abuse the car in any which way, whether it’s overdriving it coming into the corner and locking up a right-front tire or even missing the apex and sliding the right-front tires through center of the corners. The biggest thing here is that the car will handle well on corner exit for about 20 laps and then it starts to creep in lap after lap after lap. The forward bite, the grip on the rear tires just goes away and that’s what you have to manage if you want to be successful here. It’s 20 laps of good and then you’re out there wrestling the car for a good 60 to 70 laps or until a yellow (flag) or when it’s time to pit. You don’t’ see green flag stops often here. It’s all about rear tire management if you want to be successful here.”
YOU WERE QUITE VOCAL ON THE RADIO ABOUT YOUR CAR LAST WEEKEND IN CALIFORNIA; WHAT WERE YOU GUYS MISSING? “We just need to do a better job finishing off the races. When we’re running top five we’ve been credited for eighth, ninth and seventh our last three races. So that wears on you because those few points that you lose each week will continue to add up and the next thing that you know, you’re right at the cusp of eighth, ninth and 10th in points. We just need to find better adjusting tools during the race. Whether it’s done with our engineering staff or something Steve Addington finds, it’s just a matter of being the best that we can be and make adjustments on the car as the race progresses.”
HOW TOUGH IS MARTINSVILLE ON A ROOKIE DRIVER? “I would say that this is the toughest track for a rookie to come to. There’s no track in the country that will compare to Martinsville. Then you stack 43 guys out there and there’s no room for error. My first time here I think that I ran into somebody right away. I knocked a hole in the radiator, went back out after they put another radiator in it and knocked that radiator out of it too. I think a realistic good finish is just pulling the car back into the garage and making the maximum amount of laps.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL THE TWO-CAR TEAM HAS GONE SO FAR AT PENSKE? “It seems to be working well with the additions that we’ve added to not only my team, but Brad’s team as well as far as at-track staff. I think that’s positive. Where we still struggle is to get the front ends to turn properly as compared to the competition. With the information that we have through modeling, video data that we record, we just struggle through the middle of the corner with speed. No matter if we’re at a track like Bristol, a place like California, even Phoenix and Las Vegas, those are the common themes. It’s not due to any of the restructuring; it’s just finding that edge that other teams have. We watched Carl Edwards go winless all the way until the last couple of races in 2010 and now he’s on fire. They just didn’t wake up on the other side of the bed, they found something. That’s what it takes in this garage. I’ve been in it 11 years now. You have seen cycles happen positively. You see cycles negatively. We just have to find some key ingredients and it will be done through the key people that we have in our group. Not that we had three teams before and it was dragging us down, it’s just that we have the two teams now and we have the same issues.”
HOW HAS YOUR PATIENCE LEVEL CHANGED OVER THE YEARS HERE AT MARTINSVILLE? “My patience level has grown over the years. Most veteran drivers find a comfort zone when things are getting exciting. It’s funny. I won here early in my career and haven’t done anything since. Patience hasn’t necessarily helped me at Martinsville, but you have to have it at all the short tracks because things happen so quickly.”
DO YOU LIKE THE CHANGE IN QUALIFYING PROCEDURE HERE AT MARTINSVILLE? “Today we just have to cram everything together – race trim and qualifying trim. There’s going to be a lot of laps today. I would expect lap totals to be close to 250 laps just here on Friday – that’s going to be half a race. Tomorrow is just two qualifying laps – that’s where a driver has to step up and show what he can do for his team and make sure that he gets the best out of his car. At a short track, thousandths of a second dictate if you’re going to be up front or 10 rows back. We hope to get our best effort in today to make our job as easy as it can be for tomorrow. For the race fans, I think that it’s great to have the race atmosphere. You come in to watch a truck race and you get Cup qualifying as well. And then you get the full action on Sunday with the full 500 laps. Whatever we can do to make it better for our fans, I think NASCAR has adjusted to it as well as the race tracks.”
DO YOU STILL WORRY ABOUT BRAKES HERE AT MARTINSVILLE? “I think early on, this track was a challenge for all the cars to see if they could make it 500 laps on the equipment, primarily the brakes of course. This track, built in the 40s, they started racing here early, was more of a challenge for the cars and it still is. Now it seems like the cars are really durable and can make the full 500 laps, no problem. I always worry about the brakes in the back of my mind – glazing them over. What that means is you get the same amount of heat in the rotor as you do in the pad and it doesn’t have the stopping power like it would in the beginning of the race similar to what you would want at the end. Yes, brakes are still an issue. You can abuse them and hurt your overall effort in terms of a good lap time if you’re too hard on the brakes throughout the day.”
CAN A VICTORY TURNAROUND A TEAM AND ESTABLISH MOMENTUM? “Wins do great things for team moral. The most important thing that a win does is validate what setup you have in the race car and what key ingredient can you take from that win and apply to other race tracks? Martinsville is its own identity. Now if you go and win next weekend at Texas and you feel like you had something special in that car and you take it to the next mile-and-a-half and you do well with it, then it’s something that you run with for a while and it just carries you in points for quite some time. That’s the thing that we need to find at Penske Racing to help us maintain where we are in points.”
WHAT’S THE FEELING LIKE FEELING ‘INVINCIBLE’ AT A RACE TRACK? “The moment that you feel that you have an edge on the competition, you just have to step back and go, ‘Ok, now I need to utilize this the best way that I can’. That means that it’s a good race track for you and the team. You want to get a win. Something short of top five would be a disappointment. You go into the weekend knowing that what you’ve had in the past works and you continue to polish up on that to keep your edge. It just seems like the weekend’s flow so smooth. It seems like you have the practice speed when you unload off the truck. It seems like any of the changes that you make will make the car better. The next thing you know you’re running around and have the best-average lap time as far as practice goes and you are prepared for Sunday more than anybody else. It just seems that the weekend goes that much easier.”
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Rick
Nitro Year: 2007 (1 of 113,000 sold)
Nitro Model: R/T 4X4 Stone White
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Last Updated: Saturday, Apr 2, 2011 1:50 pm, EDT
Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500
Martinsville Speedway
Order Driver (No.) Car Qualifying Speed
1 Jamie McMurray (1) Chevrolet 96.509
2 Ryan Newman (39) Chevrolet 96.342
3 Kasey Kahne (4) Toyota 96.293
4 Joey Logano (20) Toyota 96.220
5 Denny Hamlin (11) Toyota 95.995
6 A J Allmendinger (43) Ford 95.951
7 Bobby Labonte (47) Toyota 95.903
8 David Reutimann (00) Toyota 95.854
9 Kevin Harvick (29) Chevrolet 95.825
10 Regan Smith (78) Chevrolet 95.791
11 Kyle Busch (18) Toyota 95.786
12 Mark Martin (5) Chevrolet 95.714
13 Brian Vickers (83) Toyota 95.694
14 David Ragan (6) Ford 95.675
15 Clint Bowyer (33) Chevrolet 95.651
16 Paul Menard (27) Chevrolet 95.554
17 Jimmie Johnson (48) Chevrolet 95.540
18 Martin Truex Jr. (56) Toyota 95.477
19 Marcos Ambrose (9) Ford 95.468 20 Kurt Busch (22) Dodge 95.463
21 Jeff Gordon (24) Chevrolet 95.429 22 Brad Keselowski (2) Dodge 95.386
23 Carl Edwards (99) Ford 95.275
24 Matt Kenseth (17) Ford 95.256
25 Trevor Bayne (21) Ford 95.256
26 Dale Earnhardt Jr. (88) Chevrolet 95.184
27 Juan Pablo Montoya (42) Chevrolet 95.118
28 Tony Stewart (14) Chevrolet 95.089
29 Dave Blaney (36) Chevrolet 95.079
30 Casey Mears (13) Toyota 95.003
31 Travis Kvapil (38) Ford 94.955
32 Jeff Burton (31) Chevrolet 94.671
33 Greg Biffle (16) Ford 94.661 34 Robby Gordon (7) Dodge 94.548
35 Michael McDowell (66) Toyota 94.472
36 David Gilliland (34) Ford 94.369
37 Joe Nemechek (87) Toyota 94.209
38 Landon Cassill (09) Chevrolet 94.045
39 Mike Skinner (60) Toyota 93.877
40 Ken Schrader (32) Ford 93.613
41 Tony Raines (37) Ford 93.253
42 J.J. Yeley (46) Chevrolet 93.253
43 Hermie Sadler (71) Chevrolet 91.744
__________________
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Nitro Year: 2007 (1 of 113,000 sold)
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Dodge Motorsports, 2011 NSCS Goody’s Fast Relief 500 Post-Qualifying Report
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 20th
“We’re slip-sliding around with the cool track conditions. It’s funny, I’m looking at the weather forecast and it’s supposed to be 81 and sunny on Monday. I want to thank all the fans for toughen it out today; this track has had some tough times with the weather. It’s going to be a great show on Sunday because these tires are wearing out so fast, nobody has any idea what to expect for the race. It’s going to be a lot of slip-sliding around. There’s going to be a bunch of ping pong balls bouncing around out there.
“The track is not taking the rubber in, something different than what we’ve seen here in the past. Maybe they missed it a little on the chemical in the tires as far as laying down the rubber. What’s happening is the tires are shredding so fast, they aren’t developing heat and we’re chafing the rubber right off the tires.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 22nd
“We might have worked too hard to get some heat in the tires before that qualifying lap. We have a really fast Miller Lite Dodge Charger, it’s a 500-lap race and we have plenty of time to get to the front if we run smart. We’ll keep a close eye on the truck race today and see what happens there. It should give us an indication of what we can expect tomorrow.”
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 Fast Five/SPEED Energy Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 34th
“I think we have a setup in our car that wasn’t that good in qualifying, but I think we’re going to be really good on the long runs in the race. We were the last time. A lot of guys struggle with right rear grip, but I don’t think that will be the case with the setup we have in the Fast Five/SPEED Energy Dodge.”
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Nitro Year: 2007 (1 of 113,000 sold)
Nitro Model: R/T 4X4 Stone White
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KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 16th
“Just typical Martinsville racing, but under the additional pressure with the tire situation, but it was the same for everyone. We were way off on our setup at the beginning of the race and got a lap down only 50 laps into the race. We spent the next 175 laps trying to get the lucky dog (free pass). We had to play it conservative because we had used one more set of tires than the leaders when we got our lap back. I got into the back of the 47 car (Bobby Labonte) and really messed up the right front fender, so I had to be careful about any beating and banging for the final 200 laps.
“We went a lap down again during a long green, but used the wave around on the next caution and got back on the lead lap. Our goal was just to try to stay on the lead lap and out of trouble the rest of the day. We were able to do that until we pitted under green with 35 to go and then the caution came out. We just had to hang on and get all we could at the finish. That’s just our luck here.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 19th
“We probably had about a 10th-place car, but blew a right-front tire in the middle section of the race and lost two laps under green. We got one of them back and got in the lucky dog spot, but couldn’t catch a caution. We drove our butt off to put ourselves in position for good things to happen, but they didn’t. Then we pitted under green late in the race trying to have something good happen again, but another yellow came out and we lost two more laps. We got one of those back, but just couldn’t buy the break we really needed to get back on the lead lap. That’s part of racing. We just have to keep digging. We had decent speed today, probably good enough for a top-10 finish. I needed to do a little better job conserving the car and we needed to have a little more speed so I didn’t have to conserve the car.”
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 Fast Five/SPEED Energy Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 23rd
“We had a really good car today until somebody got into me and shoved me into another car. That messed the front end up; it seemed to overheat at that point. We had to pull some tape off which made the car tighter. It was an OK day. We would have rather run better with the movie “Fast Five” on the car. When the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) had the flat tire, if they (NASCAR) had thrown the caution, we would have been back on the lead lap and there were just a few cars on the lead lap at that time. We would have been in good shape, but overall, it was a good day. That last stop, we pitted a little too early. We pitted under green and the caution came out. That put us two more laps down. We finished 23rd. It could have been a better finish with any luck.”
__________________
Rick
Nitro Year: 2007 (1 of 113,000 sold)
Nitro Model: R/T 4X4 Stone White
CAT-BACK Exhaust, CAI, Projector Head Lamps
Fully-Equipped w/all factory options
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