A sunny Sunday afternoon in southern Virginia was just perfect for Hendrick Motorsports’ history-making day in Martinsville, Virginia.
The organization’s William Byron won a two-lap shootout in NASCAR overtime, claiming the Cook Out 400 Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway in a banner day for owner Rick Hendrick’s stable of drivers.
Through 297 laps at NASCAR’s shortest track, Byron’s No. 24 team brought his Chevrolet in first, pitting with 103 laps left and cruising away for a seemingly easy win.
However, John Hunter Nemechek’s No. 42 blew a tire with three laps to go, and most of the field stayed out.
Byron, 26, then held off a hard charge by his teammates to beat Kyle Larson by 0.550 seconds for his third victory of 2024 and 13th of his career.
With fellow Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott coming home third, the organization became the first ever to have its cars finish 1-2-3 in the 151 career races at Martinsville.
Alex Bowman, the team’s fourth driver, was eighth.
It was also the 40th anniversary of the powerhouse racing organization’s first win, a victory by Geoffrey Bodine on April 29, 1984, also at Martinsville.
“I just want to thank Chase for racing me clean there,” said Byron, who led 88 laps but had to fend off one hard bump by Elliott off Turn 4 coming to the white flag. “He gave me a shot, which is to be expected, but we all finished it off.”
Added Larson, “Congrats to William, he did a really good job. He schooled us all after that green-flag stop.”
Bubba Wallace was fourth followed by Ryan Blaney in the season’s eighth race, which was extended to 415 laps because of the final caution and shootout.
After beating Wallace by a scant 0.001 seconds in Saturday afternoon’s pole qualifying, Larson topped every circuit around the 0.525-mile track, beating Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota for his first career stage win at the tight paper clip-shaped speedway and his fourth of this season.
Team Penske driver Joey Logano gambled on a two-tire stop on his No. 22 Ford and paced the way for most of Stage 2, but Denny Hamlin grabbed the top spot on Lap 170 to become the third leader of the season’s eighth race.
Hamlin went on to hold off Wallace for his seventh career stage win at Martinsville, while Logano’s two-tire service continued to prove costly as he slipped back and finished fifth.
But Elliott, the 2020 Cup champion, took the lead over Hamlin before Christopher Bell spun in Turn 4 just past the 200-lap mark, the day’s fourth caution in a fairly calm first half of the fourth short-track event.
–Field Level Media
