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Martinsville takeaways: Was it tougher to pass than usual?

MARTINSVILLE, Virginia — Not even Martinsville was immune to the enhanced aerodynamic effects on cars so far this season thanks to NASCAR’s 2019 rules.

Multiple drivers remarked after the race that the larger spoilers on the back of Cup Series cars implemented for the 2019 season created a large enough wake that was felt at the slowest track on the Cup Series schedule.

“The spoiler is just so big that it takes so much air off the car that’s behind that you have to run a different line,” fifth-place finisher Denny Hamlin said. “The bottom is the fastest line and then you’re just running a longer distance up top. So it’s very difficult once you get behind to pass someone.”

[Related: Brad Keselowski wins at Martinsville]

Hamlin said the track widened out in the corners as a result of the turbulent air as drivers looked for a way to get out of the wakes of the cars ahead of them. Though he referred to Sunday’s race, won by Brad Keselowski, as “similar” to previous Martinsville races.

His teammate Kyle Busch said it was tougher to pass at the half-mile track than it has been.

“It was tougher today for sure than usual,” Busch, who finished third said. “Normally you can see guys slipping around and slipping a lot sooner than today and that gives you a better opportunity to make moves and make passes sooner in a run than what it did today. Obviously the competition maybe was a tick closer car to car to car, but once you get so close, that’s it, you can’t do anymore.”

That lack of slippage could very well be a result of the increased downforce from the larger front splitters and rear spoilers on Cup Series cars.

Ryan Blaney, meanwhile, said he didn’t think it was tougher to pass than normal.

“I thought it was easier to pass after five laps,” Blaney, who finished fourth, said. “It was kind of hard to pass everybody on restarts because you were hammer down. I didn’t think the cars drove much different. I felt like the rubber laid down a lot quicker than what it has here in the past. It got black really fast and chunked up.

“And I tried to pass Kyle there toward the end of the race before [the final] caution for 15 laps and he just had to run the top and your right sides if you’re on the bottom you just dig that chunked up rubber and you’d just have no drive, so that’s what made it tough to kind of pass car. You could defend really well. I thought that was neat. There were two lanes to the race track. You could run first or second lane or in the middle.”

Keselowski’s crew chief Paul Wolfe even said that he wasn’t expecting the aerodynamic changes to make as much of a difference as they did. With NASCAR’s changes showing their effects at Martinsville, it’s no wonder why drivers have noted how severe dirty air has been after races at Las Vegas and California.

“When we unloaded [Saturday] in practice, Brad commented on it right away how much more aggressive and harder he could drive the car than what he was used to last year,” Wolfe said. “We had to work on our setup quite a bit from what had worked for us in the past. And we knew there would be a little difference but it was probably more than I expected.”

Hendrick gets first top-five of the season

Chase Elliott’s second-place finish was the first top-five for a Hendrick Motorsports car this season. It could be a much-needed spark for the once-dominant team.

Or it could be a blip. Elliott was the only car who was any good on Sunday. Alex Bowman was next in 14th and both William Byron and Jimmie Johnson finished outside the top 20.

Elliott was by far Hendrick’s most successful driver in 2018 with his three wins. And at ninth, he’s the only driver in the top 10 in the points standings through the first six races of the season.

Race produced just one caution for a multi-car crash

The action that many expected to see at Martinsville in the form of crashing really didn’t happen on Sunday. Front Row Motorsports teammates Michael McDowell and Matt Tifft both hit the wall because of apparent right-front tire issues. And the only multi-car crash of the race came when Ty Dillon tamely dumped William Byron into a half-spin on lap 312.

Byron was able to quickly right his car and get going, so calling what he did a spin is generous. But if we’re being generous, it was just the second caution for a spin of the season after the Daytona 500. While the recent relative temerity of the Martinsville spring race may be at play here, the lack of cars losing control in 2019 is becoming a stronger and stronger trend. What’s the cause? Is it the added downforce making the cars more stable? Something else entirely?

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports

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