The final race before the NASCAR Cup Series Championship takes place today at Martinsville, Virginia. Seven drivers will battle for three spots in the title race at the 2022 Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway. The action will start a 2 p.m. ET on NBC and the NBC Sports App.
Joey Logano has clinched a spot in the championship race after winning at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earlier this month. The seven drivers that are looking to fight for the other three spots are Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell and Chae Briscoe. Hamlin is only five points behind Byron for the final spot and has had a lot of success in Martinsville as he has won at the track five times.
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“It’s going to be a fight. It’s definitely not going to be easy. I expect that passing is going to be very difficult, so track position is going to be super important,” Hamlin said, per NASCAR.com. “We’ve got to go in there Saturday and qualify up front and have good short-run speed in addition to the long-run speed. That has hurt us pretty bad the last couple of weeks but knowing how difficult it’s going to be to pass, I think we’ll put a little more emphasis on that and hopefully be able to get some stage points to give ourselves a chance to advance.”
Blaney, Bell and Briscoe need to win to guarantee them a right to compete for the Cup Series Championship. And because of that, it makes it easier for the drivers to create a plan to make it to the Championship 4. “Even the first race here we were coming to win, anyway, so I don’t think it changes your outlook. Every weekend you’re trying to win,” Briscoe said. “I think maybe knowing that you’re in a must-win makes it a little bit easier to maybe try to win the race just from a strategy standpoint because you don’t have to go for the points, where like on a road course at the Roval you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to try to get points and you don’t really have a shot to win the race, so I think for us this week knowing that we’re in a must-win it maybe makes it a little bit easier from a strategy standpoint if the cautions fall the right way.”
