{"id":22452,"date":"2018-10-27T17:30:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T22:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=22452"},"modified":"2018-10-27T20:20:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T01:20:45","slug":"nascar-saturday-martinsville-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/27\/nascar-saturday-martinsville-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Saturday Martinsville Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Clint Bowyer needs a strong performance at one of his best tracks<\/b><\/p>\n

MARTINSVILLE, Va. \u2013 With Kyle Busch sitting in the front row, waiting for his turn at the dais in the Martinsville Speedway media center, Clint Bowyer seized on an opening to take a good-natured shot at his fellow Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff contender before the drivers hit the track for final practice.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Clint Bowyer. (Photo by Jerry Markland\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Asked to name his favorite Halloween costume as a child, Bowyer didn\u2019t miss a beat in responding \u201cKyle Busch. It was pretty damn scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHa! It was too easy, man,\u201d Bowyer added. \u201cNo, my favorite? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s all about having fun with your kids and trying to get more candy than the next guy. It\u2019s about the competition. Leave it to a racer to make Halloween a competition, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Sunday\u2019s First Data 500 at the .526-mile short track (2:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the competition will turn serious. Bowyer enters the first race in the Playoffs\u2019 Round of 8 three points below the cut line for the Championship 4 and 40 points behind Busch, the series leader.<\/p>\n

Of the three tracks in the Round of 8 \u2013 Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix \u2013 Martinsville is arguably Bowyer\u2019s best, but the driver of the No. 14 Ford, one of four Stewart-Haas Racing entries still alive in the Playoffs, doesn\u2019t think a victory at NASCAR\u2019s shortest Cup track is his only path to the Championship 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think it is necessarily an absolute must-win,\u201d Bowyer said. \u201cYou can\u2019t put that pressure on yourself the first of three races. If you do, you\u2019ll probably go out there desperate and make a mistake. We are not in that situation. We need to take care of business on a track that is typically good for me. That doesn’t mean you\u2019ll go out there and dominate stages or get a race win, but you have to go out there and take care of business on a track that has been good to you over the years and take advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, a win would be huge. You allow yourself to think that, \u2018If I win this thing this weekend, I\u2019m in the dance.\u2019 That\u2019s a cool thought and something to think about and extra incentive\u2026 You can\u2019t beat yourself. We have put ourselves in a hole before and I don’t think we can do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

BEING THE ONLY GIBBS DRIVER LEFT MAY BE AN ADVANTAGE FOR KYLE BUSCH<\/b><\/p>\n

Where Clint Bowyer is one of four teammates still competing for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship, Kyle Busch is a lone wolf at Joe Gibbs Racing.<\/p>\n

Daniel Suarez didn\u2019t make the Playoffs in his final season, and both Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones fell by the wayside in the first round, leaving Busch as the only driver left to carry the JGR banner. That\u2019s a far cry from 2016, when JGR placed all four of its drivers in the Round of 8.<\/p>\n

In terms of allocation of resources and help from teammates, the solo status could be a blessing for Busch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (having four cars in the Playoffs) puts more strain on the shop, obviously, to have to produce more cars \u2013 more caliber cars to go to the race track each and every week,\u201d Busch said. \u201cEverybody puts everything into all their stuff all the time, but there\u2019s that added motivation when you\u2019re in the Round of 8, so I just think that compounds itself when you have to go with four versus just one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, also, when you have four guys in there, you have four that are striving to have really, really good, solid days and the teammate game isn\u2019t necessarily teammates. It\u2019s all about yourself all the time when you have all four in versus when you have just myself being eligible now.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, there\u2019s opportunity for me to get some slack cut my way by my teammates that I wouldn\u2019t necessarily ask them to or expect them to. They obviously have to race for what they feel is right as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

CHASE ELLIOTT HOPES TO ERASE PAINFUL MARTINSVILLE MEMORIES WITH WIN<\/b><\/p>\n

When he entered five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races as a preview to his rookie season, then-19-year-old Chase Elliott got a baptism by fire.<\/p>\n

His debut came at Martinsville, one of the toughest tracks on the circuit to master. Other trips included Richmond, Charlotte, Indianapolis and Martinsville \u2013 not exactly a gentle collection of speedways.<\/p>\n

Elliott would just as soon erase the maiden run at Martinsville from his memory. He qualified 27th and went downhill from there.<\/p>\n

When he took the checkered flag in 2015, he was 38th in a 43-car field, 73 laps down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been trying to forget about that day,\u201d Elliott said on Saturday at Martinsville. \u201cActually, (crew chief) Alan (Gustafson) had a lot to do with choosing those races. I think he tried to pick really tough races, races that I was going to struggle at, and they were terrible, to be completely honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad we did it when we did it. I didn\u2019t have a whole lot of fun at the time, but I\u2019m glad he chose the races that he did. Alan had a big hand in it, and I was told the races they were thinking about. I\u2019m not going to say no \u2013 I said it sounded good, and off they went.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since his debut, Martinsville has been kinder to Elliott. He finished third in the spring race in 2017 and ninth this past March. He was contending for the win in last year\u2019s Playoff race until Denny Hamlin knocked him into the Turn 3 wall in the late going.<\/p>\n

But if Elliott is to achieve a personal best at the paper-clip-shaped track and enhance his prospects for a Championship 4 berth at Homestead, he\u2019ll have to do so from the 21st starting position he earned in Saturday afternoon\u2019s qualifying session for the First Data 500.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   Clint Bowyer needs a strong performance at one of his best tracks MARTINSVILLE, Va. \u2013 With Kyle Busch sitting in the front row, waiting for his turn at the dais in the Martinsville Speedway media center, Clint Bowyer seized on an opening to take a good-natured shot at his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":19259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[407,16],"class_list":["post-22452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-martinsville-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mencs_bowyercar_061018-e1528684786575.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5Q8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22454,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22452\/revisions\/22454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}