Ryan Blaney won at Martinsville to make the title race again.
A year after 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 final four.
Blaney passed Chase Elliott with 15 laps to go and will race for the title with his Team Penske teammate Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell, who bounced off the wall on the final lap as he passed a slowing Bubba Wallace to sneak into the final four ahead of William Byron.
As you’re reading this, we don’t know for sure if Bell or Byron is in the final spot. Bell provisionally has it, but NASCAR is taking 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 move 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 Ross 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.
