Martinsville Preview: Denny Hamlin Chases Seventh Win as Rain Threatens Sunday

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In this Martinsville preview, Denny Hamlin brings six Cup wins at Martinsville Speedway into Sunday’s Xfinity 500, the next-to-last race of the season, needing to make up 73 points on Kyle Larson, with rain in the forecast for race day.

The 500-lap race starts at 2 p.m. ET Sunday, November 1, on NBC at the 0.526-mile track in Ridgeway, Virginia. It is the ninth race of the 10-race Chase.

Weather forecast

The AccuWeather forecast for Martinsville issued Monday calls for:

• Friday, October 30: Partly sunny and warm, high of 76, low of 45, 7% chance of rain
• Saturday, October 31: Some sunshine, high of 71, low of 49, 17% chance of rain
• Sunday, November 1: Rain much of the day, high of 65, low of 50, 60% chance of rain

Martinsville has had permanent lights since 2017.

The track

Martinsville is the shortest track on the Cup schedule and the only one that has been on the circuit since NASCAR’s first season in 1948. The track opened in 1947. Its corners are banked 12 degrees, with concrete on the lower lanes of the turns and asphalt on the flat straightaways, which gives it the “Paperclip” nickname.

Sunday’s race is 500 laps, 100 more than the spring race.

Tires

Goodyear had not released its tire notes for this weekend as of Monday morning. In the spring race, Cup teams ran the softer left-side tire Goodyear introduced at Martinsville last October, which is built to wear more than earlier versions, paired with the right-side tire used since fall 2024, Goodyear said in March. Each Cup team got 10 sets for that 400-lap race: one for practice, one for qualifying that carried over to the race, and eight more for the race.

The O’Reilly Auto Parts Series has run the same 15-inch tire setup at Martinsville since 2022. In March, O’Reilly teams got five sets for their 250-lap race.

Odds

Sportsbooks had not posted lines for the Xfinity 500 as of Monday morning. For the spring race, DraftKings opened Ryan Blaney and Hamlin as co-favorites at +500, followed by Larson at +550, William Byron at +700, Christopher Bell at +800 and Chase Elliott at +900, EasySportz reported.

Historical favorites

Denny Hamlin. Hamlin has won six Cup races at Martinsville. His most recent came in the spring of 2025, when he led 274 of the last 275 laps. In March, he won the pole, swept the first two stages and led 292 laps before finishing second.

William Byron. Byron swept this race last year: the pole, both stages, 304 laps led and the win. He also won the spring 2024 race, when Hendrick Motorsports finished 1-2-3 at Martinsville for the first time. He finished fifth in March.

Ryan Blaney. Blaney won the fall race in 2023 and 2024 and finished second to Byron last year. He was sixth in March.

Chase Elliott. Elliott won in March from the 10th starting spot. He also won the fall race in 2020 and finished third in this race last year.

Kyle Larson. The points leader has finished in the top 10 in each of the last five Martinsville races: second and third in 2024, fifth in both 2025 races and ninth in March.

Chase picture

Larson leads Hamlin by 73 points, Bell by 74 and Chase Briscoe by 79. Joey Logano is 100 back and Blaney 107 back. The season ends November 8 at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida.