Martinsville was night and day between Xfinity and Cup

The heavy difference between the Saturday race and the Sunday race at martinsville speedway must be studied. There was complete chaos on Saturday especially in the later stages of the race, but on Sunday the race was quite tame. While it must be noted that racing in the cup series at this track took a hit compared to the gen 6, but the racing compared to the xfinity series is still way less chaotic.

So the Xfinity series raced at martinsville speedway in 2006, but after that race they didn’t return for 14 years. Once they returned it was nothing but chaos.Since their return to the paper clip, the racing has provided quite a bit of controversy including the most recent race this weekend. This is a stark difference from how the cup series races have been as there has been less passing but less wrecks as well. The Xfinity series has time and time again had races at the track start off as racing and ending in slam and run racing. It showed even more true this past Saturday as several drivers were involved in wrecks that showed them driving through another car. The biggest one was Sammy Smith driving through and clearing Taylor Gray on the final turn of the race and causing a big crash off of turn 4 as well.

As for Sunday, while there is less contact in the cup series there is also a bit more respect on the track and the Cup field sounded off on the lack of respect in the Xfinity race and backed it up on Sunday by racing cleaner for the most part, and also having some nice respectful battles for position as well in a car that’s seen by most as a pain to pass in.

This has led to a discussion about what needs to happen to hold drivers more accountable. I for one think that the penalties should be more strict as the penalties now still haven’t seem to help much as overall aggressive driving in the series has continued. Suspensions do seem much for a sport built on contact but penalties such as losing more laps would help in my opinion. Team owners have their hands tied when it comes to sitting their driver out themselves because of sponsor money and a sponsor or driver could take their money elsewhere. Either way if someone doesn’t intervene the problem will continue.

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