The NASCAR Cup Circuit makes its way to gool ol’ Martinsville Speedway this week for Sunday’s NOCO 400, and there’s no shortage of ways to be part of the action with our best Virginia sportsbook apps.
Chevrolet has brought the most cars to Victory Lane in NASCAR’s top series over the past 20 races at the 0.526-mile oval. That includes two of the past three events at the place known as “The Paperclip,” the shortest track on the schedule.
Stock cars have been tearing around Martinsville since the circuit’s earliest days. Indeed, in the very first season of what was then the Strictly Stock series, 1949, the sixth event on the NASCAR schedule was at the facility in the southern part of Virginia, not far from the North Carolina border.
Back then it might have been hard to imagine that legal, regulated sports betting in Virginia would exist – much less that people would be doing it on something called a cell phone.
Martinsville NASCAR Cup Stats By Manufacturer, Past 20 Races
Chevy Leads Pack at Martinsville
For the NOCO 400 (3 p.m. Sunday, FS1) all eyes will be on Hendrick Motorsports, which has won eight times in the past 20 Martinsville races.
The team has three victories in the past five events at the track by three different drivers, most recently by William Byron at last year’s spring race. Byron and Hendrick teammate Kyle Larson (who has never won at Martinsville but has three top-five finishes) are co-favorites at BetMGM Sportsbook Virginia with +650 odds to win.
Some veteran drivers have histories at Martinsville that are okay but not great: Kyle Busch (+1200 at BetMGM) has two wins there in 35 career starts. The next active full-time Chevy driver on the career Martinsville starts list, AJ Allmendinger (+20000), is winless with two top-five runs in 23 tries.
Toyota Has Had Recent Success Too
As good as the Henrick team has been at Martinsville, it would be a mistake to overlook Joe Gibbs Racing on the short oval.
Denny Hamlin, who grew up in Virginia, is the active leader in wins there with five, but he has not claimed the famed grandfather clock trophy as the victor since 2015. He’s the co-favorite at Caesars Virginia Sportsbook with odds of +650, in a five-way tie with JGR teammates Christopher Bell and Martin Truex, plus Chevy’s Byron and Larson.
One interesting twist at Caesars as of Wednesday afternoon is that, though Hamlin is tied with those drivers as race favorite, he has +240 odds to be the top Toyota finisher, trailing Bell and Truex (both +210).
Truex has three victories in the past seven races on The Paperclip, but he has not won a Cup Series race anywhere since late 2021. If you just can’t decide, Caesars offers Hamlin or Truex to win at +290, giving you two Gibbs drivers to wager on simultaneously.
Turn to BetVirginia for the top VA sports betting promotions before you place a wager.
Ford Seeking Fortune At Martinsville
Ford is slightly out in the cold at Martinsville, with four wins in the past 20 events and none since 2019. And that victory was by Brad Keselowski, who then drove for Roger Penske but now is with RFK Racing as a driver/part-owner, though he still drives for Ford.
Penske’s Joey Logano is the top Ford on the board, with +900 odds to win with Sports Illustrated Virginia Sportsbook. He owns one victory at Martinsville, in 2018.
Logano’s teammate, Ryan Blaney, has yet to win for the Blue Oval brand at the southern Virginia track. But he can claim seven top-five finishes in 14 starts, as well as the best average finishing position (9.7) among active drivers.
Blaney is winless in the series since 2021, but his odds of a top-five finish on Sunday are +135 at DraftKings VA Sportsbook, which might be a good play for anybody looking to hedge their bets.
Methodology: BetVirginia.com used Racing-Reference to calculate the total number of wins, second place and top-five finishes at Martinsville Speedway for each manufacturer since April 2013. Three drivers have found Victory Lane twice during the 20-race stretch, including Martin Truex Jr. winning back-to-back races in October 2019 and June 2020.
