RaceSheets NASCAR DFS Preview: NOCO 400

Following Christopher Bell’s victory at Bristol-Dirt, NASCAR leaves Tennessee and heads back to Virginia this week for 400 laps around the paperclip in Martinsville. Therefore, let’s wrap up action from this past Sunday’s Food City Dirt Race, review numbers from last year at Martinsville, and assess some expectations for this Sunday NOCO 400. 

Food City Dirt Race Wrap Up

Overall, the race played out as expected, save for Ryan Preece getting tangled up with Kyle Larson in the third stage and destroying lineups across the industry as Larson experienced a 60-fantasy-point swing with his DNF. The drivers with dirt experience excelled once again, as Larson, Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick led 244 of 250 laps. Bell and Reddick finished 1-2 while Austin Dillon, with plenty of dirt history in his own past, held position all night and finished third and veteran dirt racers Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Chase Briscoe ended their respective evenings in fourth and fifth. 

For the sake of the rest of 2023, this race is going to be an event we shouldn’t need to hearken back to and for 2024, hopefully this event doesn’t land back on the calendar. While FOX and NASCAR might enjoy broadcasting a little chaos from time-to-time, I prefer my chaos to come in the form of superspeedways and not losing a race at Bristol due to this gimmick. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn’t be in favor of Bristol having both of its normal races while a track like Pocono loses its lone event for a gimmick event (i.e. Eldora Speedway). 

Martinsville Speedway

As previously stated, NASCAR heads back to Virginia for the first of two races this season at the historic Martinsville Speedway. In last year’s rendition of this race, the event happened on a Saturday evening the weekend before the Bristol-Dirt race. However, with NASCAR wanting to make the Easter weekend synonymous with Bristol-Dirt, the schedule looks slightly different as per this season compared to last as Martinsville falls after Bristol-Dirt this season.

Regardless, as part of a schedule experiment/quirk for 2022, NASCAR decided to shorten the Spring race (400 laps versus 500 laps) while also making it a night race. The 20% reduction in laps was a welcome sight for fans and drivers knowing that NASCAR recognizes that some events are unnecessarily long — not to mention, the Fall-Martinsville race still runs 500 laps. Thus, there was a precedent that both events didn’t need to run 500 laps. 

While reducing the race from 500 to 400 laps probably meant fewer drivers ended up with mechanical failures or getting wrecked out, the bigger impact to the Spring Martinsville race had to do with the time of day they raced. Racing in Virginia, in early April, is already a scenario for cool temperatures and a grippy track that reflects those temperatures in the 50s or 60s. However, changing the start time from the middle of the day to the early evening insured that a track with grip, combined with a new car that made it tough to pass, was going to set the stage for lots of lap-turning. 

By the end of the 403 laps, extended due to Todd Gilliland spinning by himself with five laps left, the lead had changed hands just six times among four drivers. Polesitter Chase Elliott led from the initial green flag all the way until lap 185 when William Byron grabbed the lead off pit road following the end of the second stage. Byron led for 118 straight laps (186-303) until Ryan Blaney passed him to lead for five laps before Byron wrangled it back for another 11 laps. For a short one lap period, Austin Dillon assumed the lead before Byron took it back to lead for the final 83 laps of the race. 

The track, weather and time the race took place all combined to create a racing scenario where passing was tough and whoever got out front was nearly impossible to reel in much less actually pass. Unless a driver took advantage of a fast pit stop, the passing in that race was minimal and had to be done with a bump and run move — something we should expect quite a bit this Sunday afternoon. 

Expectations for the NOCO 400

All that said, if looking back at last year’s loop data, understand that is why the race looks so bland. Thankfully, for just the pure fun of watching, we don’t have to worry about that same scenario playing out. Although, with all of those factors on the periphery, it made anticipating the proper moves in DFS easier than making scrambled eggs. However, as viewership was down considerably on FOX that Saturday night, network executives made sure that FOX was given no Saturday evening races during their half of the season. 

Thus, this race returns to a typical Sunday afternoon time slot and should look like a regular Martinsville race but with 400 laps. In fact, via the long-range forecast, the temperature for this Sunday could be approaching 80 degrees meaning this concrete might be a little slippier than usual hopefully meaning cars are a little less glued to the track than what we saw last Spring. 

The other factor to be considered is what difference the changes to the Generation Seven short track package make to Sunday’s racing. With the near-30% reduction in downforce, this hopefully means that we will see passing outside of bump and runs in the corners. There could be occasional divebombs into turns one and three but hopefully these changes mean that drivers on the outside can pass just the same. If that holds true, that could really impact Martinsville and give NASCAR fans and DFS players a version of this track that hasn’t been seen in a while. 

Regardless, with Phoenix and Richmond in our rear views, Hendrick Motor Sports is already standing out as the team to beat without a single lap of practice being ran. While theer has definitely been some shadiness to HMS with their teams receiving post-race penalties at both tracks, it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve gotten something figured out about this new package and they’ve been dominant thus far in just these two events.