Another round of bangin'

RACIN'

Steve Mickey

The bangin' will continue this week when the schedule takes the Nextel Cup series to Martinsville Speedway for 500 more laps of short-track racing. It will be the first time since 1999 that the Nextel Cup schedule has featured back-to-back short-track events.

Martinsville is another one of those old throw back half-mile ovals, but unlike Bristol - where the lap speeds are in the 15-second range - a lap at Martinsville takes around 20 seconds. The difference in speed can be traced back to the amount of banking at Bristol (36 degrees) and the very flat 12 degrees of banking at Martinsville.

While there is big difference in speeds, the racing is very similar. Martinsville's flat turns allow for more bumping and rubbing without the danger of being put in the outside wall which drivers have at Bristol. Also, a round of pit stops at Martinsville can turn into its own race because the pit road is very narrow. The sight of sheet metal being bent by a crew trying to get its driver back on the track is all too common.

Just like Bristol, the winner at Martinsville is often more of a survivor than the driver with the best car. Rusty Wallace won last season's spring race at the track after he inherited the lead when part of the concrete came up in Turn 3. It appeared Jeff Gordon had the car to beat that day but a piece of the concrete damaged his car so much it took away any chance he had to win.

Martinsville, Bristol and Richmond are the only three short tracks (less than a mile in length) left on the Nextel Cup schedule. The popularity of racing at these three venues shows, with Bristol and Richmond always hosting sellout events while an empty seat at Martinsville is a rare sight.

This popularity is why the new tracks which are being proposed in Seattle and New York are being designed as a replica of Richmond's 3/4-mile oval. The longer straightaways at Richmond allow drivers to race the track more like a superspeedway than a short track. There isn't as much bangin' but seldom does the leader find himself out of traffic.

n Pit notes: One of the biggest expenses for either Cup or Busch Series teams is their engine departments. Cup teams which have in-house engine programs spend in the neighborhood of $3.5 million a year to make sure their power plants are competitive. Busch Series teams don't have that kind of budget, but the money spent on engines eats up a large portion of their yearly budget. Many Busch Series teams are competing on a very tight budget, which has NASCAR exploring the possibility of requiring teams to race the same engines in two consecutive races. ...

Martinsville's Advance Auto Parts 500 will be the first race this season in which this year's points will determine the starting lineup. The top 35 are assured of a starting position regardless of their qualifying speed. ...

One of the hottest off-track items up for discussion this season has been where the proposed NASCAR Hall of Fame will be located. The governing body has taken the high road on this one and opened it up for any city to present a proposal before May 31st. Several cities have already expressed an interest, including Daytona Beach, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta and Kansas City, Kan. Daytona Beach can boast of being NASCAR's headquarters but Charlotte is really the hub of the sport. Almost every major team which competes in the sport is housed within 20 miles of the city and Lowe's Motor Speedway host three major Nextel Cup events each year. Charlotte officials realize that in order to land the Hall of Fame, it is going to take a combined effort of not only city officials but also those who work in the sport. Charlotte's effort will be spearheaded by one of the true power brokers in the sport, Rick Hendrick. ...

Next weekend Texas will host the first of two races this season, the first time that track has had two stops on the series. The race is expected to draw close to 215,000 fans making it the second-most attended race on the schedule. Only the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway will attract more with a quarter-million race fans expected to file through the gates in August.

Steve Mickey's NASCAR column appears Wednesdays in the News-Express.