2021 Spring Martinsville Race Report

The 2021 Spring Martinsville race was delayed until Sunday, but it was typical Martinsville. At least, typical of the last few Spring races at Martinsville.

Caution- and Lead-O-Grams

The race was delayed by rain and my report was delayed by this graph. (Grrrrr) Took me an afternoon to develop this complex a graph and then three days to figure out how to get the hatch marks off the legend on the second graph.

Grrrr.

The Lead-O-Gram shows how Hamlin dominated this race — until the very end. Hamlin’s got a 76-point lead over #2 Martin Truex, Jr. in the championship standings, but no wins. Yet.

Ryan Blaney led the second-largest number of laps, but finished 11th. You’ll note the absence of Chase Elliott’s name on the Lead-O-Gram, even though he finished 2nd.

A Race of Accidents and Spins

The average number of cautions for a Spring Martinsville race is 6 over the last three races and 8 over the last five. We got fifteen cautions for 102 laps (20.4%). That much more reminiscent of the way Martinsville used to be, as shown below. Eleven to sixteen cautions used to the be the norm for the Spring race.

There were more spins than accidents (7 vs. 6) in the 2021 Spring Martinsville race. Of course, none of the spins involved 12 cars. That ‘Little Big One’ is responsible for the much lower Running at Finish rate: Only 78% of the cars made it to the checkered flag. That number has been 91-92% over the last eight years.

More Passing

Another way the 2021 Spring Martinsville race was different from the last five iterations is in passing. There were 1976 green-flag passes compared to only 1369 last year and 978 the year before. Of those 1976 passes, 944 were quality passes.

Below, I show the same information as average green-flag passes per lap. We’re up to 5.0 in the 2021 Spring Martinsville race, compared to 2-4 the last five races.

So there you have it: your 2021 Spring Martinsville Race Report.

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