What The Metrics Had To Say About Martinsville
The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built several analytical metrics to help give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track—because, as any driver can attest, auto racing isn't always a fair sport.
The following numbers—explained in full detail here—are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, many of which come from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating, which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.
The metrics from Sunday's Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway are as shown below:
No, this was not a re-post of last week's metrics. For the second race in a row, Ryan Blaney earned the TDR, while Chase Elliott was just behind him, in second. Even more coincidentally, Blaney's score of 233.18 was nearly identical to his Homestead score of 233.4, while both races also saw Elliott take the ETDR win, despite Blaney topping him overall.
What was different, though, was that the two of them also finished 1-2 on the track, after Blaney passed Elliott for the win with 15 laps to go in Martinsville. With the victory, Blaney earned his way to the championship four, while Elliott joins Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, and Kyle Larson in seeing his title hopes come to an end. As shown by the full season chart, this is one of the weaker championship races the Cup Series has seen since the debut of the elimination-style playoffs in 2014.
Blaney (in second behind Larson) is the only title-eligible driver in the top four in average TDR score this season. The others are Tyler Reddick (fifth), William Byron (seventh), and Joey Logano (11th). Particularly given that Blaney has heated up at the right time, just as he did last year, he has to be considered the heavy favorite to win back-to-back championships at Phoenix Raceway next week.
Back to Martinsville, meanwhile, things got shaken up a little bit behind the top two. Brad Keselowski ended up third in the metrics, after leading the most laps but fading to a ninth-place finish, while Byron and Austin Dillon rounded out the top five. All of the metrics' top eight finishers also finished in the top 10 on the track, and were joined there by Blaney's teammates Austin Cindric and Joey Logano. Cindric finished fourth, but despite his race-high +35 Pass Differential, he ended up only 12th in TDR.
On the flip side of the coin, a driver who sticks out as not finishing as well as he performed, is Bell. That is partially because he was penalized on the final lap for attempting the wall ride move, which NASCAR banned after Ross Chastain famously used it two years ago. It was a last-ditch effort from Bell to gain enough points to beat Byron for the final spot in the championship round, but resulted in him being penalized to a 22nd-place finish.
All in all, Martinsville's overall Fairness Rating was a high one, the fourth straight week that this has been the case. This one came in at .8516, raising the season average to .6629. Even though most of the season's best drivers won't be racing for a championship in Phoenix, this year's playoffs has at least rewarded those who have risen to the occasion.