NASCAR: Ryan Blaney wins at Martinsville for the second straight year to earn a chance at the title

Ryan Blaney won at Martinsville to make the title race again.

Last year Blaney won at the half-mile short track a week before winning the first Cup Series title of his career. Blaney won again at Martinsville on Sunday to clinch a spot in the Championship 4.

Blaney passed Chase Elliott with 15 laps to go and will race for the title with his Team Penske teammate Joey Logano, 23XI’s Tyler Reddick and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, who bounced off the wall on the final lap as he passed a slowing Bubba Wallace to sneak into the Championship 4 ahead of William Byron.

Or so we thought.

NASCAR took several minutes to figure out the running order after the race because the sanctioning body outlawed drivers riding the wall to gain positions at Martinsville following Ross Chastain’s incredible ‘Hail Melon’ in 2022. Wallace said that he slowed in the final laps because he had a tire going down.

The Chevy guys behind Byron also made it clear they weren’t going to pass him. Byron had Chastain and Austin Dillon two-wide behind him for the final laps of the race and though it appeared both drivers had more speed than Byron, neither of them separated from each other to make a pass attempt on Byron for sixth.

Bell’s pass of Wallace meant that Bell and Byron were tied in the points standings for the fourth and final spot in the title race. But NASCAR ruled that Bell had committed a “safety violation” by riding the wall like he did.

“I don’t know what to say, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say,” Bell said after NASCAR’s decision came down. “My move was completely different than what Ross’ was.”

He has a point. Bell was out of the gas before he hit the wall. Chastain purposely floored it into the wall to go faster.

The moments of waiting — and the apparent race manipulation that preceded it — overshadowed Blaney’s clutch win. He passed Elliott nine laps after Elliott passed his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson for the lead. Larson, who leads all Cup Series drivers with six wins, is out of the playoffs along with Bell, Denny Hamlin and Elliott.

Bell was officially relegated to the last car one lap down, in 22nd, after NASCAR’s decision. Officially, he misses out on the title race by four points to Byron.

NASCAR’s scoring decision is final and cannot be appealed or protested.

Blaney is clutch again

Blaney had to win at Martinsville a year ago to have a chance at the title. He could not make it on points. He was in a similar situation on Sunday.

And he delivered. Blaney led just three times for 32 laps but had a fast car all day and ran near the front of the field. He even overcame losing two spots on a bizarre instance late in the race when NASCAR threw the green flag as a wheel from Kyle Busch’s car was bouncing on the track.

Ryan Blaney, center, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Va., Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) — Ryan Blaney celebrates after winning the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville on Sunday. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

Busch’s wheel fell off before the race went green with under 100 laps to go. But NASCAR went ahead and restarted the race anyway, apparently not seeing the wheel on the track. The race was green for seconds before NASCAR threw the caution again.

The easiest decision would have been to keep the same restart order and just simply start over. Instead, NASCAR said the order the cars crossed the start/finish line was the official running order.

That didn’t matter to Blaney. He had pitted under the previous caution and his tire advantage proved critical in the waning laps.