Ep. 59 - NASCAR Spring Martinsville and IndyCar Barber Recap

About the Podcast: The Throttle to the Floor Podcast is a motorsports podcast where me (William Earnest) and Evan Sager co-host and sit down with guests each week to talk about what is happening in the world of NASCAR, IndyCar, and NHRA plus we take frequent looks at other racing under the motorsports umbrella.

About the Episode: On this episode of the Throttle to the Floor Podcast, I recap NASCAR action from the paperclip Martinsville Speedway, including where Chase Elliott used a late strategy call from crew chief Alan Gustafson to score the Cup Series victory. I also recap Alex Palou's walk in the park IndyCar victory at Barber Motorsports Park for his second straight and third overall win in Alabama.

Transcript

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Hey y'all, welcome to today's episode of the Thor of the Floor podcast. I'm your host, Will Ernest, here today with an abbreviated episode. So let's get right into it. Uh first, the uh NASCAR class of 2027 Hall of Fame nominees were announced, and uh Kevin Harvick has now been added onto the modern error ballot. He'll he'll probably get in on his first try as a first ballot Hall of Famer, but we'll see they don't do the voting and all that until time uh comes time around for May, and then of course, whoever gets uh chosen to represent the Hall of Fame class of 2027, they'll get inducted next January. So, um yeah, and real quick, I want to also touch on uh Formula One from Japan. Kimmy Antonelli, he becomes the first teenager to win multiple races in an F1 season and the first teenager to lead the point standings after winning back-to-back uh races in China and Japan. Uh Mercedes as a constructor has also swept the first three races of the year. And uh, of course, F1 will not race again until May 3rd with the Miami Grand Prix. A long time from now, over a month, uh, due to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia ha having their races canceled due to the current uh US and Iranian war conflicts, and also Max Verstappen with these new rules um that were released for the 2026 season, he's considering quitting F1 at the end of the season. But I mean if he's really unhappy, why don't NASCAR or IndyCar try and you know cut him a check and uh you know poach him over to run a road course race for them as he said he doesn't want to run ovals. Um but F1's in Miami on May 3rd and they're in Canada on May 24th, so you kind of have some wiggle room there in between. But I mean IndyCar is the Indy Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Road Course on May 9th, and then the very next day NASCAR has the Cup series at uh Watkins Glen up in New York. So I mean maybe he could run one of those races, and if he were to run either one of those races, it just would bring so much exposure to either of those series, and you know, with all the F1 fans with Drive to Survive and the F1 movie, and it would just it'd be so much more exposure, but I don't know. Um we'll we'll see if he ends up running that. Also, Casey Mears, uh, he'll run five cup series races in uh Beer Motorsports family owned 62 car. Those races are Spring Talladega, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in July, Summer Daytona in August, Fall Talladega, and then the C the season finale at Homestead. Homestead will be K Seymiers' long-awaited 500th career cup start, which has long been a goal of his to get ever since he stepped away from full-time driving at the end of 2016. Um, so yeah, great for K Seymiers to get that goal, um, or at least get a goal set to hit that. Also, uh, it was released today that Daniel Dye was reinstated by NASCAR after completing his sensitivity training. Um, but he was released by colleague racing, Corey LaJoy. He will run the 10 truck for the rest of the season um in the truck series, while Ty Dillon will take LaJoy's place in the 25 truck for this weekend at Rockingham. So good thing that they managed to get that situation all squared away. And I mean, I don't want to say Daniel Dye's career is over, because look at Kyle Larson. I mean, similar deal with him, and then he got picked up by Hendrik Murder Sports and won the championship and all that, and he's doing just fine now, but I mean Daniel Dye isn't Kyle Larson either, so I mean I could see him running like some arca or something, but I don't know. Just does anybody want to give him a chance? That's the big thing. But getting into IndyCar, um, just the the thing you need to know. I mean, we talked about it last week. Could Alex Pelow go back to back at Barber and just dominate like he did last year, and that is exactly what he did, is Alex Pelow dominated from the pole on another uh Sunday drive, like we talked about in the park at Barber. Um, led 79 of the 90 laps to score the win at Barber, second year in a row. Um, it's Pelow's second win of the year after the Streets of St. Pete to open up the season, third win overall at Barber, uh 2021, which was his first career win, 2025 and you know this year 2026, and it's his 22nd career win and just his 102nd start, which is a 21.57 winning percentage, which is up there with some of the best winning percentages of all time in IndyCar. So pretty crazy there. Um, Christian Lingard, even with a really, really slow final pit stop, managed to finish second for the second year in a row at Barber, and also got the uh fastest slap of the race, which was about the one thing that Pelot didn't do. Um Graham Ray Hall finished third for his first podium finish since the indie Grand Prix back in 2023, so almost three years, three years apart. Um, and Kyle Kirkwood, I mean, we talked about, you know, Barber was not one of his strongest tracks, his best career finish was 10th in 2024. Last year he only finished 11th, but he managed to finish fifth, set a new uh career best at Barber. He finished fifth, and Kirkwood maintains his championship lead by only two points over Pillow and Longard sets third and points at 35 back. Indy Carr will return in a few weeks on the streets of Long Beach. Kirkwood is the defending winner after he beat out uh Pillow last year for the win. Um standings now after Barber. I still lead uh now by an even wider margin, as you'll come to realize in a minute. I lead Bernardo by 109, Evan by 134, Stacy by 145, Haley by 178, Noah by 188. You might be wondering, Will, why do you have such a big indie card lead after only four races? Well, that's because I've won all four of them. Um yeah, I picked Alex Pelow and he went out and did exactly what I thought he would do, and uh we all on the podcast thought that he would do. Uh when we mentioned it last week, he of course won the race, led 79 of the 90 laps, won the poll, led the most laps, um, and yeah, just was able to get the job done. I mean, so scored the win. I'm four for four to start the year, which was just it's something I didn't even think was possible. Um Evan picked Pato Award. I'm surprised. I mean, especially with you know Christian Lingard's teammate finishing second for the second year. I'm surprised Paddo Award didn't have more speed. I mean, only 17th. That's not a great day for award there. Um Haley went with Alexander Rossi, comes home in 11th. Stacy with Joseph Newgarden comes home in 10th. Bernardo uh with Scott Dixon comes home in seventh. Not not not quite a barber win. He's had plenty of close calls, but not not a barber win. Not in it wasn't in the cards. It was it was for Ganassi and for Pelot, but not for Dixon. And then Noah with Scott McLaughlin ended up 16th. I mean, he led opening practice and he had a fast car, and then in second practice, he uh missed the apex to turn one. He got his right sides in the dirt and just spun around backwards and ended up going right through the fence. And McLaughlin pretty much wasn't the same after that for the whole rest of the weekend. So uh tough deal there, but getting away from Alabama and going up to Martinsville, uh O'Reilly's uh you'll notice a common trend. There's some more dominating as Justin Allguyer dominated from the poll and won stage one after qualifying was canceled due to rain, although Austin Hill managed to win stage two. I want to talk about uh Lee Poliam. I'm sorry if I mispronounced that, but he had a great series debut in the uh nine car for junior motorsports, led 40 laps until he missed a shift on the front row running second um on the restart, which caused a massive parking lot on the front stretch. We again talked about this last week. Hopefully, uh Cup and the Rileys wouldn't, you know, wouldn't kill themselves and cause a massive parking lot, and uh they they didn't listen. So, yeah, but I mean you can just chalk it up to inexperience, just missed a shift, and it's just an unfortunate deal. I mean, he was beating himself up over it over on the radio, so it's just just a tough deal. A lot of torn-up race cars, but Algayer took back control and uh goes on to win this race. He leads a h Algayer leads 114 of the 250 laps to win at Martinsville. Third win of the year. All four of those win or all three of those wins, excuse me, have come in the last four races, um, including back-to-back after winning last week at Darlington, um, second win at Martinsville, and 31st career O'Reilly series victory. Um, Junior Motorsports also has now won the last five O'Reilly series races in a row, which is the longest streak in team history. I mean, Sammy Smith won the Rockingham race uh last year after Jesse Love got disqualified. So Junior Motorsports is gonna try and go for six in a row um this weekend at Rockingham. But standings-wise, I lead Stacy by 20 points, definitely a lot closer than IndyCar. Um I lead Bernardo by 50 points, Haley by 82, Evan by 112, Noah by 133. We all kind of had, I wouldn't say quiet days, more like unfortunate days. I mean, there were some good results, but not really. I picked Taylor Gray. He had like a 10th to 15th place car basically all day, tried alternate strategy, didn't work, um, but gained positions late after the whole parking lot deal. Um, comes home in 13th. Evan with Austin Hill, finished sixth, led nine laps, and one stage two. So uh productive day for him. Haley with Brandon Jones, tough deal after such a great momentum booster last week of Darlington finishing second, only comes home 18th with a lap led. Stacy with Jesse Love, 12th. Um, Bernardo with Sam Mayer, led 14 laps, but ended up 23rd again due to the whole front stretch chaos, and then Noah with Sammy Smith, who finished third, was able to uh sneak through there and uh score valuable points. Um just yeah um Rockingham's gonna be very interesting next week. Um, or not the next week, this weekend. We'll talk more, of course, on the preview show. Um, but you got Cleason Carlin's O'Reilly series debut and all that. So it's gonna be very interesting to see how that goes. But I want to talk about Cup now. Uh some more domination, only not quite winning domination, but Denny Hamlin, he dominated the first 300 laps from the poll. John Henry Niemacek made it difficult for him early, which let Byron, uh William Byron, take the lead briefly for six laps, a whopping six laps. But Hamlin in total on on the day led 292 laps, almost three-quarters of this entire race, which that that was the most laps led, obviously. Uh secured the fastest lap and swept both stages. But the winning move for this race, Chase Elliott, he short pitted on lap 261. And thanks to that strategy call by crew chief Alan Cosmenson, uh the strategy finally worked out for once. As Elliott was still up front when a caution came out on lap 312. He was then able to pit with the leaders, and then um he took the lead from Ross Chastain, who had stayed out, and uh Hamlin, and then after the ensuing restart, held off Danny Hamlin for the final uh 69 laps to the finish. Elliott wins at Martinsville, first win of the year, second career cup win after Martinsville uh in the fall of 2020, and it's his 22nd career victory. Elliott wins this race exactly 11 years to the day after his cup series debut, which ironically was also in Martinsville, but he DNF'd then. Uh Denny Hamilton mentioned uh finished second. Joey Logano third after a horrendous 33rd place finish the week before at Darlington where he just did not show up. He was slow, he was a train wreck, he was basically everything. I mean, of course, I'm not in any way, shape, or form ready to say Logano is back, especially since it's an even year. But I mean, cool. You got a third, it's good momentum. It stops the bleeding from last week, but can Logano stack up on that? I mean, when when Cup returns in a couple weeks at Bristol, Logano is pretty good at Bristol, so we'll see what he can do. Um, Ty Gibbs finishing fourth. Ty Gibbs is also really good at Bristol. You could say it's his best track. He's led a bunch of laps there, and we keep thinking, is Ty Gibbs going to win a race? I mean, he's got like four, I think five straight top tens now, and Bristol is arguably his best track. So I if there's any if there's any place that Ty Gibbs is finally gonna silence the doubters and the haters and finally get a cup series win, it'll probably be Bristol. So um we'll see. And then William Byron comes home in fifth. Also, shout out to uh Shane Van Gisbergen as SVG. He managed to qualify fifth, ran up front all day and came home in 11th place. So another solid day for that 97 car. He's finished top 14 in five of the first seven races to start the year, which is highlighted by a second place finish at Circuit of the Americas, and he currently ranks 14th in points right now to the chase cut line at plus 16. So pretty good start for SVG. I mean, it's crazy to think that uh SVG is the best track house car right now. I did not have that on my bingo car to start the year. I knew he would improve, but not as the best track house car. Um, but yeah, but getting back to Elliott, it's Chevrolet's first victory with the brand new Camaro ZL1 performance body style. Uh Hendrick Motorsports first win of the year, and it's also Hendrick's 31st win in Martinsville, which is the most by one team at one singular track. So yeah, and they've managed to get, I believe, at least one Martinsville win out of the two races per year, I believe, every year since 2020, I believe. Um, so another great uh win for them, but standings after Martinsville on the cup side. Uh Stacy, despite uh me dominating with Hamlin, uh Stacy manages to hang on to the points laid by 18 over me, 37 over Bernardo, 87 over Haley, 141 over Noah, and 166 over Evan. Um, as I mentioned, I picked Danny Hamlin, um, which kind of feels ironic, being um I'm a Chase Elliott fan, and I picked Danny Hamlin, and then Chase Elliott won the race. But I mean Hamlin dominated the first three quarters of this race from the pole, led the most laps, had the fastest lap, just I mean, Alan Guson finally made a good strategy call and it paid off. So that that's just how that's just how this race was won. I mean, just no com no complaints. I mean, you know. Um, Evan went with Chase Briscoe and finished 14th. Now, if you want to, you know, if you want to point fingers at a guy that should get a lot of complaints, it's definitely Chase Briscoe. Where has Chase Briscoe been? Like, I mean, he had some pretty bad luck to start the year early with some crashes, but it's like, I mean, you don't think of Briscoe when you come to Martinsville, but at the same time, he qualified 27th and only ran 14th. I don't know where he's been. I mean, just I don't know. He's got he's gotta figure it out. I mean, last year we were kind of in the same boat at like the same time of the year, and then he was able to figure out, and then you know, he went on a run and won three races and made it to the championship four. Of course, things are different. We don't have the playoffs anymore, but you know, bygones be bygones, I guess. Um, just we'll we'll see if Briscoe can figure it out. But I mean, Ty Gibbs has had good momentum recently. Hamlin is the best cart JGR right now. Bell has been very pedestrian, but like not terrible, but very pedestrian. Briscoe has been nowhere to be found. Or he's found in the wall. That that's that's about it. Um Haley went with William Byron, who finished fifth, led six laps early in the going after Nivachek was holding up Hamlin. Um Stacy with Lugano who finished third. Um good rebound for Lugano after that horrendous run at Darlington last week, ended up 33rd. I remember he was just getting lapped, and it's just like, what? They just they just completely missed the setup. But I will say Ford, um, we definitely criticized them on you know, where was the rest of Ford? And at certain points in this race, I mean you had Penske right there in third, fourth, and fifth. Um, so Ford definitely has work to do for sure, but Ford is managed to get better at Martinsville, and that's that's their goal right now. Um, yeah, and speaking of another Ford driver, Bernardo picked Ryan Blaney, who ended up in sixth, led a couple laps, and then uh Noah with Carson Hosevar and 17th, poor Carson Hosevar, just gets absolutely pummeled by Bubba Wallace into turn three, and then they ended up spinning around, and that's what caused a big parking lot in the cup race on the front stretch, too. And it's just man. Just just Bubba Wallace. Just he started off so good just like teammate Tyler Reddick, but he's kind of fallen off as of late. And it's like, alright, Bubba, like we gotta start picking it up now. Um, but yeah, and Hosovar is right there on that chase cut line too, so you can't Hosovar can't really afford all that much either. Um, I believe he's 15? I believe, yeah, I believe he's right below SVG at like 14 above the cut, so just not a lot of room for error, even though we're only seven races in, but I mean, seven races in, you know, you only got twenty-six until you get to the chase. I mean, we're essentially like a quarter of the way through to the chase, so I mean, just you know, you can't sit around. You gotta start making up points where you can. Um, and Hosevar in 17th is not gonna get it done. Granted, it was not his fault, it was Bubba's fault, but that's just how it goes. Um, SVG finishing 11th at Martinsville, where it's like, okay, like it's not a road course, and SVG has shown vast improvement on ovals to start the year. He has five finishes of 14th or better to start the year. And I mean you look at the other two, Daytona, he got caught up in a wreck, and really the only bad race was Vegas, where he just ugh-I don't even know where he was at Vegas. But yeah, just it's tight around that chase cut line, and it's gonna stay tight and it's gonna get tighter. But it's so much more volatile now with no more winning you're in, no more playoffs, no more gimmicks and stuff. So we'll we'll see how it all sorts out. But the cup series is gonna get a break, one of only two off weeks for cup all year, along with um like the first weekend in August, which is a complete off week for like just about every form of motorsport, except I think Imsa is running at Road America that weekend. But back to this weekend, cup is off for the uh Easter holiday, but Rock. We'll preview all the action this Friday um on the Throttlefloor Podcast. But that's all we got for today's episode of the Throttle Floor Podcast. Make sure you tune in and listen and watch and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, uh, wherever you get your podcast, check out the chill photography and throttle floor podcast, Instagrams and tech talks, and that's all we got for uh today's abbreviated episode of the Throttlefloor Podcast, and we'll see y'all on Friday.