NASCAR 'in contact with a fairly large cross-section of the drivers' to address dull Martinsville race

NASCAR visited Martinsville Speedway in Virginia on Saturday for the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400. The race saw William Byron take the checkered flag after 400-miles of racing. Tire management and strategy played a key role.

This resulted in cars being strung out over the track and made for a lackluster race in terms of overtakes and/or caution flags. The 0.5-mile track has been known for the complete opposite in terms of racing up until now.

NASCAR's senior vice president of competition, Scott Miller, spoke in an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on the topic and said:

“We’ve certainly been in contact with a fairly large cross-section of the drivers, getting their take. We’ve had meeting with Goodyear. We have a tire test (at Martinsville) planned for later on in the year to try some new things there."

Miller also spoke briefly about the cold temperatures that might have played a part in the final outcome of the race, and said:

“It’s awesome to have the events at night. There’s a certain sort of flare to that but the cold temperatures and a cold night is definitely more of a challenge than everyone understands. I think that played into some of it. We’ll keep getting all the input and make some decisions on next time going back.”

Cup Series drivers on amount of shifting at NASCAR race in Martinsville

Senior Vice President of Competition, Scott Miller recently spoke about the lackluster Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400.

One of the things that drivers seemed to mention was the large amount of shifting involved in the race. Miller went onto explain the issue and said:

“The drivers have sort of cited shifting as a potential problem. We’re taking all the input and looking at what levers we may be able to actually pull to improve it the next time we go back."

The elimination of the amount of shifting would result in different gear ratios for the Next Gen cars, said Miller:

“Even if we got that top gear exactly at the RPM that everybody desires, it was certainly a little bit low, there would probably still be the desire if we got some tires where the pace slowed down to kind of shift later in a run but it wouldn’t be every lap.”

NASCAR goes live at Talladega Superspeedway next weekend for the Geico 500.