Next to Talladega, Martinsville Speedway is arguably the second-biggest (in importance, not size) wildcard track in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Anything can happen at the half-mile bull ring – and usually does, much like we saw in Sunday’s race there.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win there was well-deserved, no question about it. Unfortunately for Junior fans, it came one race too late.
Otherwise, he would be part of the Eliminator Round right now, rather than being one of the eight drivers that have been eliminated from the Chase thus far.
Still, Junior deserves the kudos and accolades he received. But at the same time, could the way Sunday’s race played out overall also be a harbinger of things to come in the remaining three races of the season?
I’m talking about the fact that five of the top-10 finishers at Martinsville were either now-former Chase contenders or never made the playoffs to begin with.
We start with Earnhardt, then Tony Stewart, who tied his season-best finish with a fourth-place showing in arguably the best race he’s driven this season.
And then there were Clint Bowyer (7th), AJ Allmendinger (9th) and David Ragan (10th).
We can even extrapolate that a bit further: From 11th through 20th, there was only one Chaser, as Carl Edwards came home with a 20th place showing).
Go even further than that, and the two remaining Chasers finished 31st (Brad Keselowski) and 33rd (Kevin Harvick), respectively.
Again, this was Martinsville. It’s totally unlike the next racetrack on the schedule, this coming Sunday at Texas. But you could draw some comparisons between Martinsville and the one-mile relatively flat track at Phoenix, a place oftentimes called Martinsville on steroids.
Could the eliminated or non-Chasers potentially wind up stealing the show from here on out with three races left for the championship?
I’m not saying that’s likely, but it is something to be taken into some serious consideration. If guys like Junior, Stewart and Bowyer continue their prowess and momentum gained at Martinsville, the championship could ultimately see a significant part of the way it plays out directly decided by the Chase have-nots rather than the haves.
And I haven’t even broached the subject that as of right now, two of the four top-ranked drivers remaining in the Chase (Ryan Newman and Matt Kenseth) still have yet to win a race in 2014.
If the current standings hold serve through Texas and Phoenix, we potentially may have a four-time champion (Gordon), two non-winners this season (Newman and Kenseth), two potential first-time champions (Newman and Logano) and one other former champion (Kenseth, 2003) who has waited nearly as long as Gordon has for another title, as the makeup of the final four in the season finale at Homestead.
In other words, we won’t have a Jimmie Johnson, Earnhardt, Kurt or Kyle Busch, Stewart, Kasey Kahne in the running for the championship, and with the potential of Keselowski and Harvick out of it if they can’t right their suddenly listing ships in the next two races.
We’ve seen some pretty crazy racing in this year’s reformatted Chase, particularly the last two races.
But if Talladega and Martinsville are an example of what’s to come, this Chase is going to get a lot crazier before a sane champion emerges.
Follow me @JerryBonkowski