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Chandler Smith Steals the Martinsville Win on the Final Restart as the Truck Title Fight Tightens to 20 Points

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Chandler Smith takes the checkered flag in the No. 38 QuickTie Ford to win the Black's Tire 200 at Martinsville Speedway on October 30, 2026.
Chandler Smith's No. 38 Ford takes the checkered flag Friday night at Martinsville. (Front Row Motorsports)

Chandler Smith led only 12 laps on Friday night at Martinsville Speedway. They were the 12 laps that mattered.

Smith muscled past his Front Row Motorsports teammate Layne Riggs on the final restart with 12 laps to go and held off Ben Rhodes by 0.574 seconds to win the Black’s Tire 200, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase race at the 0.526 mile Paperclip. It is Smith’s third win of the season, the 10th of his Truck Series career, and his first Martinsville grandfather clock, the most famous trophy in the sport.

Riggs Owned the Night, Until He Didn’t

For most of the night, this was Riggs’ race. He swept both stages and led 156 of the 200 laps, at times pulling more than a second clear of the field. Rhodes finished second, Riggs third and Ty Majeski fourth, a sweep of the top four spots for Ford. Sixteen year old rookie Tristan McKee, who became the youngest pole winner in series history this weekend, led 29 laps of his own and finished fifth.

Then came the final restart. Riggs got a slow launch, Smith rolled the outside lane and cleared him for the lead, and the championship picture changed in the shuffle behind them.

The Win That Complicated Everything

Here is the twist. Smith’s win made life harder for his own teammate.

Points leader Kaden Honeycutt got knocked around in the final restart traffic and fell from the top five all the way to 14th. Riggs still gained ground on him, cutting Honeycutt’s lead from 43 points to 20, with Honeycutt at 2,403 points and Riggs at 2,383. But if Riggs had won the race himself, he would have left Martinsville with the points lead by one point.

Smith, meanwhile, won the race and was still mathematically eliminated from the championship. He sits 103 points back, with Majeski 128 back and Christian Eckes 140 back, all out of the running with one race left.

“I am very happy that we can deliver a clock to Bob Jenkins,” Smith said of his team owner. The win comes in Smith’s final season with Front Row Motorsports, as he will not return to the team in 2027.

The Top 10

1. Chandler Smith, 2. Ben Rhodes, 3. Layne Riggs, 4. Ty Majeski, 5. Tristan McKee, 6. Andres Perez de Lara, 7. Tyler Ankrum, 8. Giovanni Ruggiero, 9. William Sawalich, 10. Christian Eckes.

One Race, Two Men, One Trophy

The Truck Series championship is now a two man fight. Honeycutt and Riggs settle it next Friday night, November 6, in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1. Twenty points apart, teammates all around them, and nothing left to save it for.

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Kyle Larson Can Clinch the Cup Championship at Martinsville in Sunday’s Xfinity 500

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October 30, 2026

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Kyle Larson celebrates with crew chief Cliff Daniels and the No. 5 team after winning the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on October 25, 2026.

A NASCAR Cup Series championship can be won at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, a week before the season even ends.

Kyle Larson takes a 73 point lead into the Xfinity 500, the penultimate race of the season, Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC. Under the Chase format, where all 16 drivers run every race and the points decide the title, Larson’s math is simple. A maximum points day is worth 76. If Larson scores 59 points on Sunday, or gains just four points on the field, he clinches his third Cup championship before the finale, something no driver has ever done in the Chase era.

He would also become the first driver to win back to back Cup titles since Jimmie Johnson won five straight from 2006 to 2010. Larson is the defending champion.

How He Built the Lead

Larson did not win a single race in the regular season. He has won three of the eight Chase races since.

The biggest came last Sunday at Talladega, the first drafting track win of his career. Larson gained 10 spots on the final lap, beat his teammate William Byron to the line by 0.041 seconds, and collected 71 of a possible 76 points on the day, blowing his lead open from five points to 73 in one afternoon while nine of the drivers chasing him were caught in incidents.

The Paperclip Loves Him Back

If there is a track where Larson would choose to close this out, it might be this one. His 4.4 average finish at Martinsville since the start of 2023 is the best of any driver in the series. He won there in the spring of 2023 and has finished in the top 10 in his last eight Martinsville starts.

His team owns the place, too. Hendrick Motorsports has 31 wins at Martinsville, the most by any organization at any track in NASCAR history, including Chase Elliott’s win there this past spring and Byron’s win in this race last fall, when he led 304 of the 500 laps from the pole.

The Men Who Need a Miracle

Denny Hamlin sits second, 73 points back, with Christopher Bell 74 back and Chase Briscoe 79 back. Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney are 100 and 107 points behind, and Tyler Reddick is 126 back. For any of them, it starts with winning Sunday and hoping for a Larson disaster.

Hamlin is the one to watch. He is the most successful active driver at Martinsville with six wins, and he led a race high 292 laps there in the spring before finishing second to Elliott. Bell won at Martinsville in 2022 and has four top 10s in his last six starts at the track.

Larson is not interested in the math talk. “There’s still two races,” he said after Talladega. “It’s so easy to look at it and be like, oh, the 5’s got it. We could go to Martinsville, there’s a stack up in turn three on the first lap. I could cave in the radiator and be done.” His crew chief Cliff Daniels says the No. 5 will stay on offense and race to win, not to protect points.

How to Watch

The Xfinity 500 runs Sunday, November 1 at Martinsville Speedway, 500 laps and 263 miles, live at 2 p.m. ET on NBC. Cup practice is Saturday at 1 p.m. ET with qualifying at 2:05 p.m. ET, both on truTV. If Larson does not close it out Sunday, the championship is settled next Sunday, November 8, at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

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