This weekend, NASCAR rolls into town to race on one of the sport’s oldest and most storied venues: Martinsville Speedway. The track has been a proving ground for some of the very best to ever get behind the wheel of a stock car. It’s a short track in the purest form and one of the very best on the NASCAR schedule. As with other tracks we’ve discussed recently, some drivers just take to certain tracks. For whatever reason, it just suits their driving style to the point where they become almost unstoppable at the track. Martinsville is no different. Over the track’s long history, many drivers were able to take home one of the most unique trophies in NASCAR: the famed Grandfather Clock.
So, let’s take a look at the paperclip and some of its most dominant drivers. Here are the 5 winningest drivers in the history of Martinsville Speedway.
One of the drivers who was considered a master of the short tracks during his career was the original driver of the “Blue Duce,” Rusty Wallace, and he was particularly great at Martinsville. He has won there a total of 7 times. The first of those victories came back in 1986. Rusty was driving the number 27 Kodiak Pontiac for Blue Max Racing. He scored his first of 3 poles at the track two years later in 1988. His dominance at the Paperclip really started in 1992 when he started racing for Team Penske in the number 2 car. Between the fall race in 1992 and the spring race in 1996, Rusty Wallace finished every race at the track in the top 3 positions. Of those 8 starts, 5 were wins, 3 of them being in a row between the spring of 1994 and 1995.
His career stats at the track are as follows: 7 wins (including his final win in 2004), 17 top 5s, and 25 top 10s across 44 starts. He also led a total of 3,632 laps at the track. In the mid-90s to the early 2000s, Rusty Wallace was a consistent threat to win any race at Martinsville Speedway.
It seems appropriate that our number 4 and number 3 spots on this list are a tie between Jimmie Johnson and his mentor driver, which we’ll talk about a little later. It seems that Hendrick Motorsports’ dominance at Martinsville Speedway began after the tragic plane crash that took the life of Ricky Hendrick, a racer himself and Rick Hendrick’s son. Jimmie Johnson scored 9 wins in his career at the famous half-mile flat oval.
His first win at the track came in 2004. From the fall of 2005 to the fall of 2009, Jimmie scored 9 top 5 finishes at the track, 5 of them being wins, including three in a row starting in the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2007. In 38 starts at the track, Se7en-Time visited Martinsville’s victory lane 9 times and scored 19 top 5 finishes and 25 top 10s. He has led a total of 2,932 laps. His final win at the track came in October of 2016, the same year he won his record-tying seventh NASCAR Cup title.
Jimmie Johnson’s mentor and partial car owner, Jeff Gordon, also has 9 wins at the Paperclip and has put up similar numbers. His first win at Martinsville came in September of 1996 and he never looked back from there. He made 47 starts at the track, and in those starts, he won 9 times, finished in the top 5 a staggering 29 times, and was in the top 10 on 38 occasions. He led a total of 3,779 laps at the track. The final win of Gordon’s legendary career came in 2015. In that race, he qualified for the Championship 4 in his final full-time season. The last race Gordon ever ran was at Martinsville. That came in 2016, driving the number 88 Nationwide Chevy as a substitute for an injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. He finished 6th in that race, his best finish in the 88 car that year.
His most dominant showing at the track came in October of 2003. He led 313 of the 500 laps, ultimately winning the race.
Many fans often forget just how good Darrell Waltrip was back in the day. This is because most fans my age know him as a retired broadcaster for FOX, not as a retired driver. Fans my dad’s age, however, were there for Darrell Waltrip’s most dominant stretch. Unfortunately, those memories tend to be overshadowed by how he performed in the later stages of his career. But when Darrell Waltrip was a driver, he was a short track ace. This is due to him cutting his teeth at Nashville Fairgrounds. He dominated all the short tracks. You name one: Bristol, Martinsville, Richmond, North Wilkesboro. Good Ole DW has multiple wins at them all. But he was particularly good at Martinsville.
In the NASCAR Cup Series, DW made 52 starts at the Paperclip. In his first-ever start, all the way back in 1975, he finished second. That ought to tell you something. In 52 starts, DW won 11 races. He scored 27 top 5s and 31 top 10s at the track. DW also won 3 races in a row with Hendrick Motorsports at the track between 1988 and 1989. He led 3,617 laps at the track. His final NASCAR start at the track came in the Michael Waltrip Racing number 99 Aaron’s Dream Machine in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2006.
The King of NASCAR is also the King of the Paperclip! There’s not really a surprise here. King Richard has been around the sport almost since the very beginning. And, with this being one of NASCAR’s oldest tracks, it’s pretty obvious that Petty had racked up a number of wins at the track. Currently, he holds the record for most wins in Martinsville history at 15. He made 67 starts at the track and earned 30 top 5 finishes and 37 top 10s. His win total at the track also includes 5 in a row that he won between 1968 and 1971.
Throughout his decades-long career, Richard Petty led 3,779 laps. That makes him tied with Jeff Gordon.
What did you think of this list, Daily Downforce readers? Are you surprised by any of these entries? Let us know what you think! And be sure to tune into DailyDownforce.com all weekend long for our coverage of NASCAR’s bi-annual return to the Clip!
