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The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Martinsville for the track’s first-ever night race. The .526-mile track combines long, flat straightaways with narrow turns, earning it the nickname “The Paperclip.” Action gets underway Wednesday at 7:00 PM EST, and you can tune in on FS1.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic means the inaugural night event will run without fans, that’s a mere bump in the track’s 73-year history. It’s the only venue to have remained on the schedule since the sport began in 1948!

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Past Performance at Martinsville

Drivers’ past performance is a great predictor of how they’ll perform moving forward. It’s usually good to look at stats from comparable tracks to increase your sample size, but there’s no track quite like Martinsville. While Bristol is similar in length, it has a more traditional oval shape; while New Hampshire is similarly flat, it’s at best a scaled-up version of Martinsville due to its 1-mile length. As a result, let’s keep our focus trained on the Paperclip.

Driver Name	Avg Finish	Races	Wins	Top 5’s	Top 10’s	Driver Rating (Last 10)
Jimmie Johnson	9.31	36	9	19	24	84.40
Denny Hamlin	9.39	28	5	15	21	101.76
Brad Keselowski	10.85	20	2	9	14	116.06
Kyle Busch	12.07	29	2	16	17	119.30
Ryan Blaney	12.88	8	0	3	4	94.15
Joey Logano	13.18	22	1	6	10	106.06
Clint Bowyer	14.29	28	1	6	16	85.36
Matt Kenseth	14.68	37	0	6	15	100.60
Ryan Newman	14.81	36	1	8	17	78.10
Kevin Harvick	14.86	37	1	5	19	98.84
Martin Truex, Jr.	17.39	28	1	6	12	106.43

Jimmie Johnson was once the driver to own here. He’s won 25 percent of his starts at Martinsville, and he’s finished in the top-10 66 percent of the time. Unfortunately, his performance has started to decline, and that’s reflected in his poor recent driver rating. Johnson hasn’t led a lap here since 2017, and he’s finished outside the top-10 in every race here since 2016.

Following Johnson’s decline, no one driver has emerged as his replacement. The last four races here were won by Martin Truex, Jr., Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, and Clint Bowyer, respectively, although the package used at this track last year essentially handed Truex and Keselowski their wins.

If we look at driver ratings, a metric that weighs finishing position alongside laps led, average running position, and fastest laps; Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski emerge as favorites. Before last year’s Fall race, Kyle had finished top-5 in eight consecutive Martinsville races, a streak dating back to 2015! With a better package for this year’s event, Rowdy should be a safe bet to succeed. Likewise, Keselowski has finished top-10 here in every event since 2016, and all but one of those finishes came in the top-5.

Rivals Joey Logano and Martin Truex, Jr. are the next-best drivers in terms of driver rating. Both drivers have won in the last four Martinsville events, but neither has the consistency of Busch or Keselowski. Truex’s low average finish here is due to his early-career struggles at the track, as he finished 15th or worse in nine of his first eleven races. He’s obviously improved a lot since then, but he hasn’t won a race here without last year’s package.

I’m a bit more optimistic about Logano, however, as he’s led laps in 10 of his last 12 Martinsville starts. While he hasn’t always finished races, he has the skills and aggression needed to run up front at a track like this.

We can’t sleep on Virginia native Denny Hamlin here, either. Yes, his five wins all came in 2015 or earlier, but it’s not like he’s regressed as a short-track racer. Hamlin has led laps in 21 of 28 career races at Martinsville, and he’s posted consecutive top-5s in the last three races. He’s a proven winner at this track, and the reversion to the older package should help him.

Lastly, Clint Bowyer is a mid-pack guy that could have a big day on Sunday. If you ignore his stats from 2015 and 2016 — his last year with the collapsing Michael Waltrip Racing and his only year with backmarker HScott Motorsports — he’s got a pretty solid recent record here. He finished 10 of 12 races since 2012 in the top-10, and one of those misses was due to a trackbar issue.

Recent Speed

Drivers can only go as fast as their cars will let them. We’ve seen two races on the short-track package so far, and I’ve averaged the top drivers’ driver rating through those races to give us a benchmark for speed.

Driver	Driver Rating (Short)
Brad Keselowski	117.40
Kevin Harvick	116.10
Kyle Busch	112.60
Joey Logano	105.60
Clint Bowyer	94.65
Denny Hamlin	88.15

Ford drivers Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick have led the way in terms of short-track speed. Fords earned the top-two spots in both races (Keselowski and Bowyer at Bristol; Logano and Harvick at Phoenix), and Ford drivers have led 391 of 816 possible laps on short tracks. As a result, I see them as the manufacturer to beat here.

Chase Elliott has a comparable driver rating through at the two races (115.35), but I’d rather roll with someone more proven at Martinsville, especially when he’s the only Chevy driver to have led at a short track this year.

While Toyota drivers Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin haven’t been dominant in 2020, they looked impressive at Bristol. The duo combined to lead 231 laps, and Hamlin would’ve finished much better than 17th if he hadn’t spun while racing for the lead. Either driver could grab a win here in the right equipment.

Although he’s often the forgotten man behind Harvick, Clint Bowyer has impressed in the series’ two races on the short-track package. He finished fifth at Phoenix and second at Bristol, and though he never led a lap, his high average driver rating proves that he didn’t just get lucky. Bowyer may not compete for the win, but he should be in the mix to finish top-5 or top-10.

Betting Odds 

Let’s take a look at the betting odds for our six drivers over at DraftKings Sportsbook.

Driver	To Win	Top-3	Top-10
Kyle Busch	+450	+120	-480
Brad Keselowski	+550	+150	-400
Denny Hamlin	+650	+175	-360
Joey Logano	+900	+240	-265
Kevin Harvick	+1100	+300	-235
Clint Bowyer	+2000	+550	-115

Unfortunately, DraftKings had not published top-5 odds by publication. As a result, I’ve included their top-3 lines instead. With Kyle Busch favored, here are my suggested bets for the Martinsville night race.

Best Bets for Martinsville

Isaiah’s Pick is currently 3 for 6 on the season. 

To Win: Kyle Busch (+450)
Kyle Busch is yet to win a race in 2020. By this point in 2019, he’d already won three times! In recent weeks, he’s flashed the requisite speed, as he led laps at both Bristol and Atlanta. It’s only a matter of time before Kyle ends up back in victory lane, and since he owns the top recent driver rating at this track, I’m willing to play the favorite.

To Win: Denny Hamlin (+650)
My head says Busch, but my gut says Hamlin. His five career wins here are the ninth-most all time, and only Hall of Famer Fred Lorenzen had more wins here in fewer starts. Hamlin’s average finish is fifth-best all-time among drivers with 20 or more starts, as he trails only Lee Petty, Jeff Gordon, Cale Yarborough, and Jimmie Johnson. He was a vocal advocate for the return of this package last season, so look for him to pounce and land his third win of the year.

To Finish Top-3: Kevin Harvick (+300)
I know I said that Ford has been the manufacturer to beat this year, but I can’t see them pulling a three-peat in the short-track package — the wins at both Phoenix and Bristol came after late-race cautions. That said, I was stunned to see Harvick with such long odds to finish top-3 here. Sure, he isn’t a Martinsville ace, like Johnson or Hamlin, but he’s shown the most speed in the short-track package this season. Harvick has an average finish of 5.5 so far in 2020, and he’s finished third or better in four of ten races.

To Finish Top-10: Clint Bowyer (-115) — Isaiah’s Pick
Bowyer has been incredibly hit-or-miss so far this year. He’s posted three top-10 finishes along with four finishes of 20th or worse. Two of his top-10s came with the short-track package, however, so this would be the track to play him. And with his Martinsville track record, including his win in 2018, I expect Bowyer to compete for a top-10 finish.

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Isaiah Sirois is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Isaiah, check out his archive and follow him @is_sirois.