Virginia Lawmaker Reveals Martinsville Speedway Race Date Was on NASCAR’s Chopping Block
What’s Happening? Throughout the flurry of changes to NASCAR’s schedule over the past few seasons, few racetracks with dual race weekends…
With the NASCAR Cup Series’ hit-or-miss short track racing product, some fans are asking if tracks like Martinsville Speedway should lose a race date, a change that NASCAR legend Richard Petty warns is a move in the wrong direction.
NASCAR’s schedule has been anything but stable in recent years, with several long-standing venues losing race dates as the sport pushes into new markets.
These shake-ups have even reached Virginia’s classic tracks in the past few seasons.
Richmond Raceway, once a two-race staple dating back decades, lost one of its Cup weekends ahead of the 2025 season as NASCAR expanded to Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
Amid those changes, the state’s famed “Paperclip” nearly faced a similar fate. A recent claim from a Virginia lawmaker says that NASCAR at least explored removing one of Martinsville’s two race weekends in recent seasons before ultimately backing off.
The discussion was serious enough that Virginia lawmakers and industry figures launched a motorsports caucus to protect racing in the state, especially as scheduling shifts and urban development continue to pressure historic venues.
What’s Happening? Throughout the flurry of changes to NASCAR’s schedule over the past few seasons, few racetracks with dual race weekends…
With the track’s recent downturn in fan favorability, given the current short track product in the Cup Series, and these recent reports, a NASCAR fan asked Hall of Famer, “The King” Richard Petty, if the sport should take away one of the track’s two traditional race dates.
For the seven-time Cup Series Champion, the issues with these questions are not a push against change. It’s about losing sight of what built the sport in the first place.
Martinsville has been there since 1949, back when the track was still dirt. In his eyes, that alone puts Martinsville in a different category, as if the track were almost family.
“When I look back at the old days, Martinsville started all the racing,” he added. “It’d be like losing a brother or something.”
While other tracks have come and gone, or lost dates as NASCAR reshapes its schedule, the Virginia short track has held on. It’s still one of the few places that carries a direct line from the sport’s early days to what it is now.
Dale Inman, the legendary crew chief and co-host of Petty’s weekly race recap show, also pointed to another moment in the sport’s history, when R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company entered the sport in the early 1970s, and the schedule began shifting. A lot of short tracks disappeared from the schedule during that time, but Martinsville didn’t.
“They cut out a lot of the short tracks… Martinsville was one of the few that survived it,” he said.
That’s really the point he’s making. The track has already weathered one major shift in NASCAR’s identity. It’s still here decades later, still doing what it’s always done.
“I hope they stay alive a long time from now,” Inman added.
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