We Speak Cars & Racing

Jesse Love Takes a Slim 19-Point Lead Into the National Debt Relief 250 at Martinsville, His Toughest Track

Published

55 minutes ago

October 30, 2026

Justin Allgaier greets team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. on pit road at Martinsville Speedway after winning the spring race there on March 28, 2026.

The tightest championship fight in NASCAR comes to the tightest track in NASCAR on Saturday.

Jesse Love brings a 19 point lead into the National Debt Relief 250 at Martinsville Speedway, the penultimate race of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season. Seven drivers are still alive for the championship, the top five are covered by just 59 points, and the man in front has to survive the one track that has beaten him his whole career. The race goes green Saturday at 4 p.m. ET on The CW, 250 laps and 131.5 miles around the half mile Paperclip.

The Standings

1. Jesse Love, 2,401 points. 2. Justin Allgaier, 19 back. 3. Corey Day, 29 back. 4. Sheldon Creed, 50 back. 5. Carson Kvapil, 59 back. 6. Sam Mayer, 96 back. 7. Sammy Smith, 108 back.

Love’s Martinsville Problem

Love is the reigning series champion, chasing back to back titles before he moves up to the Cup Series full time in 2027, something nobody has done in this series since Tyler Reddick in 2018 and 2019. And right now he is the hottest driver in the Chase, with wins at St. Louis and Phoenix and a third place run at Talladega last week, a series best 5.7 average finish across the Chase.

But Martinsville is different. Love has one top 10 finish in five starts there and has never finished better than ninth. His 18.6 average finish at the track is the worst of the seven drivers still fighting for the title, and Love admitted this week that Martinsville might be his biggest challenge of the whole run in. He starts eighth on Saturday.

The Men Hunting Him

Justin Allgaier is built for this race. The JR Motorsports veteran won at Martinsville this spring, leading a race high 114 laps, owns two career wins at the track and has 10 top 10 finishes in 12 Martinsville starts. He starts third.

The pole belongs to his teammate. Carson Kvapil, a short track racer by trade who won a Martinsville grandfather clock in a late model in 2024, put the No. 1 Chevrolet on the pole at 95.371 mph on Friday, leading a JR Motorsports sweep of the top three starting spots with Rajah Caruth second and Allgaier third. Kvapil is fifth in points and very much alive.

Sheldon Creed quietly owns the best short track average finish of the contenders this season at 4.0, Hendrick Motorsports rookie Corey Day is only 29 points back, and defending race winner Taylor Gray, who scored his first career win in this race a year ago, starts inside the top 10 as well.

How to Watch

The National Debt Relief 250 runs Saturday, October 31 at Martinsville Speedway. TV coverage is on The CW with the green flag at about 4:25 p.m. ET. One week later, the championship is decided at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

We Speak Cars & Racing

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

Published

49 minutes ago

October 30, 2026

We Speak Media

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.