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The No. 9 Hendrick team's risk of short pitting in the final stage paid off with a win for Chase Elliott at Martinsville Sunday afternoon.
This win marks the first win for Hendrick Motorsports of the season and the first for Chevy following five wins for Toyota, four of which were provided by Tyler Reddick and one for Ford.
Denny Hamlin was the class of the field for the majority of the race, leading 292 of 400 laps, just short of the Gen 7 record for most laps led set by Elliott’s teammate William Byron last fall. But when Hamlin lost the lead to Ross Chastain on a bad restart, it opened the door for a different winner.
Elliott was running ninth in the final stage after qualifying tenth, and passing up near the front at Martinsville was sparse. Alan Gustafson made the call for Elliott to come in and pit early on lap 262.
With the leaders coming to pit closer to lap 300, Elliott made it up to second when a debris caution was called on lap 311. Under caution, Elliott was able to go and get tires to get back on the same strategy as the leaders.
The debris caution was followed by a multi-car crash caution two laps later, when Bubba Wallace ran into Carson Hocevar, collecting Zane Smith, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suarez, Chris Buescher, Riley Herbst, John Hunter Nemechek, Erik Jones, and Connor Zilisch.
Elliott was still in second on the following restart, starting on the outside of Chastain with 68 laps remaining.
Two laps in Elliott made the pass on Chastain to lead for the second time. While Elliott and Chastain were battling for the lead, Hamlin and Ryan Blaney were battling for fourth.
In turn four, Hamlin got into Blaney, and the No. 12 car hit the wall and fell back to 7th.
Hamlin told MRN after the race that he lost control exiting turn 4, which led to the pinch and contact.
With Blaney out of the battle and Chastain dropping as well, Hamlin set his sights on getting back to the lead and battling Elliott. Hamlin held the fastest laps in the closing period but didn’t have enough time to close the real estate up to Elliott. Elliott ended up winning by 0.565 seconds.
"We’ve never had a win this early in the season," Elliott told NASCAR on FOX post-race. "So, just really great team effort. I’m just so proud of Alan and the whole UniFirst team; they did a great job. Yeah, we took a gamble, you know we were going to two stop that last stage and honestly I think it was going to work out really good for us either way. They put up with a lot; they have to put up with me all the time."
Winning the seventh race of the season, this is one round earlier than Elliott's record for the earliest win set in 2020, when he won the second Charlotte race following the COVID-19 schedule scramble. 2020 was an outlier for the driver, who in his seven seasons, in which he's recorded wins, got his first win around round 13.
Hamlin finished second ahead of Joey Logano and Ty Gibbs. William Byron completed the top five for the first time two Hendrick drivers have been in the top five all year. Blaney made up one position after falling back following the Hamlin contact to finish sixth ahead of Christopher Bell.
Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, and Josh Berry completed the top ten.
Related StoriesVictoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.
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