Blue-Emu 400 NASCAR DFS Strategy Breakdown

While the Blue-Emu 400 is the second-straight short track race for the Cup series, it is still different. It’s an incomparable short track for one. For another, it’s a night race — the first one of the year. Martinsville Speedway is a special track to begin with, but it gets even more special under the lights on a Saturday night. The Paperclip, as it’s known, is the only track that’s been on the NASCAR schedule since the sport’s inception. In fact, it’s the 75th anniversary for Martinsville this year — quite an accomplishment for this tiny gem of a track.

The reason that Martinsville is called the “Paperclip” is because, well, it looks like a paperclip from the air. Relatively long straightaways, for a track this short, and tight turns at either end give it that appearance. Just how short is this track? The shortest on the schedule at .526 miles per lap. Not only are the laps short, but the racing quarters are tight as well with a full curb on the inside of the corners too. What does all of this mean for the racing and DFS? Let’s dive in to that with some DFS Strategy talk, track facts, and driver stats for Martinsville.

Martinsville DFS Strategy

Not to copy and paste from last week’s strategy but we are using a similar one. With how small Martinsville Speedway is, it induces a lot of lap traffic, pretty early on in runs and what does that mean for DFS? It means we have to have an eye on finishing position and realize that position differential can be, again can be, capped. Historically speaking, dating back to 2012, drivers starting outside of top-25 in the grid are, on average, less likely to give us positional upside. That doesn’t mean that we’re completely avoiding them based on practice and/or qualifying, but it is something to keep in mind. Even with 100 fewer laps in this race compared to normal, we’re still focusing on getting a laps led leader, or two, into our builds. In the last four straight 500-lap races here, there have been two drivers a race to lead more than 100 laps each. In the same respect though, while there are 1.8 drivers on average to lead 100-plus laps over the last five races, there are 2.2 per race to lead 50-plus. So drivers are leading less 20-40 laps or 100 or more, with little in between. To go with the capped positional upside point, only once in the last five races have more than 20 drivers finished on the lead lap. All that being said, this doesn’t mean that we lock in the pole-sitter given that it’s been quite some time since a pole-sitter has won here and on average there are several spots inside the top-10 are all similar in laps led.

Track Facts

Martinsville isn’t only the shortest track on the schedule, it’s one of the flattest. While the track will proudly tell you that the banking is 12 degrees in the corners, it’s really more so on the outer groove and it doesn’t really make a big difference. The other thing to mind here is how tight pit road is. Not only is the entrance to pit road tight, at the end of the backstretch, but it’s also curved. There are pit boxes on the corners which can be tricky to get in and out of during cautions and stage breaks. Unplanned pit stops can cost a driver three laps pretty easily at a place like Martinsville. 

Martinsville Stats To Know

• This is a track in which track history is usually the biggest determination of how a driver will perform
• Winners since 2006 are drivers who have done very well at Martinsville previously as well with only two drivers since then having Driver Rating marks of lower than 95 at previous races at the Paperclip.
• Over the last five races at Martinsville, an average of 5.4 drivers a race have posted double-digit position differential marks
• There are seven drivers in the field this week with a 95-plus Driver Rating in the last five Martinsville races and all but one (Brad Keselowski) have done it with their current team.
• There is really no comparable track to Martinsville as it’s not like any of the other short tracks or the flat tracks of Phoenix and New Hampshire.
• Looking at the Weekly Track Stats table you’ll notice that positions past P25 in the grid only pick up a couple of spots on average but spots before that move up and down by several spots for the most part.

Last 5 Martinsville Races

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five Martinsville Speedway races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

• The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Martinsville races for the data.
• The Similar Races table: The data is comprised of stats from the last 10 races at Martinsville.
• The Weekly Track Stats Table: The stats are based on every race at Martinsville Speedway since 2012 based on starting spot regardless of the driver in that starting spot.