Martinsville Speedway

Martinsville. I love this place.

It is where I saw my first Winston Cup race. I had a media pass to the sterile viewing room high above Turns 1 and 2, but that's no place to watch the start of a race at a track such as Martinsville.

So, before the praying and the singing, the posting of the colors and the driver introductions, I escaped the pressroom and climbed down the stairs to a spot as close as a person can get to the chain-link fence bordering the oval.

When the flag dropped, 43 cars came around Turn 4 in a flash of color, then blasted down the 800-foot long front straight, the throaty growl of 35,000 unleashed horses giving fair warning of the swirling tornado in their wake.

Then, twenty seconds later--long before the thunder subsided--they were back again. And again. And again.

Martinsville Speedway. No one who has ever been there can feel indifferent about the place.

It is stock car racing at its most basic level. Hard on the brakes. Hard on the gas. Hard on the sheetmetal.

Sure, it's been updated with new grandstands and better paving. Heck, they've added more parking, a tunnel under Turn 4, and a few more roads to get in and out of the place. But underneath that tarted-up exterior, it remains one of the toughest little short tracks in the nation.

It is the track everyone loves to hate, or hates to love.

But what makes Martinsville . . . well, Martinsville?

It Has Roots

Martinsville was the heart of NASCAR before there was a NASCAR.

The track's first professional-level races were organized by "Bill France Enterprises" of Greenville, North Carolina.

When it opened in 1947, the track was dirt. The paper-clip-shaped oval had logged three seasons of competition before France invited track owners and promoters to Florida to create the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing.

Martinsville ran its first NASCAR-sanctioned race on July 4, 1948, when Big Bill France drove to an Eighth-Place finish. That makes it the oldest track in the Nextel Cup Series today. None of them--not even Daytona International Speedway--can lay claim to more races.

From the original capacity of 750 wooden bleacher seats, the Speedway has grown to include room for 70,000, as well as more than two-dozen corporate suites overlooking the track.

Martinsville's configuration was determined by a railroad track that ran along the backstretch. For more than 50 years it was common to see trains running along the outside of the track while cars were circling the oval. The rails have been moved, making room for more grandstand seating.

It takes less than 30 seconds to walk from the inside of the front straight to the inside of the backstretch. And the distance from Turn 1 to Turn 3 can be covered in a couple minutes without breaking into a sweat. The spectator seats rise to form a bowl that echoes the smells and sounds of the battles below to the highest row of spectators.

"The beauty of the track is that there is almost no place in the stands where you can't see the entire oval," says Mike Smith, Martinsville's public relations boss. "I don't know of a track anywhere the fans feel closer to the action."

"There's not a bad seat in the house," says Clay Campbell, the track president and grandson of founder H. Clay Earles.

Campbell began working at the speedway full-time right out of high school.

"I could go to college or work for my grandfather," he says. "I figured he was the best professor a guy could have. He was a tough guy who expected a lot out of you. But I've never had a day that I've regretted my decision."

The track has had its ups and downs.

While its early success helped create NASCAR, a wreck at Martinsville threatened to destroy it.

NASCAR was still largely unknown beyond the Southern towns where races were held. About the only time the national media paid any attention was when there was a bad wreck. That happened at Martinsville in May 1957, when a Mercury driven by the popular Billy Myers ripped through a guardrail and hit a group of spectators. An 8-year-old boy was killed, and many other fans were injured.

The ensuing publicity and editorials calling for an end to America's "blood sport" had the automakers racing out the back gate. Within a month, the Automobile Manufacturers Association withdrew all its support of motorsports and decreed the industry should abstain from "automobile races or other competitive events in which speed or horsepower are emphasized." The AMA also agreed not to "advertise or publicize . . . capabilities of passenger cars for speed, or specific engine size, torque, horsepower or ability to accelerate or perform in any context that suggests speed."

The ban lasted five years. The AMA boycott forced France to rethink his organization. His new business model required track owners and promoters to put up purses for races rather than rely on factory teams. It operates that way today.

You won't find any mention of the '57 wreck in the track's official history.

In that way, the oval's checkered history makes it something like the uncle who shows up twice a year for Sunday dinner. He smells of booze and he smokes cheap cigars. Parents roll their eyes when he rings the doorbell. They hide the silver. But at the end of the day, the entire family is gathered around him as he talks about a life no one else in the family will ever live, about adventures that could never be duplicated today.

And when he goes home, everyone's just a bit envious.

"I Hate This Place"

"If they took it off the schedule I wouldn't feel bad about it at all," says Pat Tryson, crewchief for Mark Martin's Ford. "Unless they replaced it with Talladega. As much as I don't like Martinsville, I [dislike] Talladega a lot more."

Love it or hate it, that's part of the track's charm, says Campbell.

"There was a time when a lot more folks disliked the layout," he says. "Then the business went heavily into the mile-and-a-half ovals and began losing its short tracks. Suddenly, Martinsville is so different from other tracks that drivers look forward to coming back here. It's a change of pace for them."

But the track is hard on every part of the car.

"It's rough on tires," says Keith Eads, tire specialist with Joe Gibbs Racing. "It just eats 'em up. We use as many here in 250 miles as we will in 500 at a bigger track."

It's a challenge for Goodyear," says Phil Holmer, marketing manager of stock car racing for Goodyear. "It is so different that we bring a unique tire and tire combination to Martinsville. The sidewall is a bit stiffer and the tread surface is a bit softer. We don't use it anywhere else but there."

"It's just hard to race there," adds Tryson. "It is so much different from any other track. Nothing we know about any other car works at Martinsville. It's all stop and go. You need lots and lots of forward bite and huge brakes that will last the entire race.

"The real problem is that the cars have become so fast that they really don't work on the track very well. It used to be that you had 10 fast cars and 24 slower ones. Now everyone goes the same speed and it makes it really hard to pass . . . unless you move someone out of the way to do it."

That is the essence of Martinsville.

Look underneath the front and rear bumper covers of a Martinsville car and you'll see the superstructure of a NASCAR battering ram. There is bracing and tubes and steel bars you will never see at California Speedway or Daytona. At this oval, speed is second to survival.

"It's the way you gotta build them for this place," says Doug Richert, crewchief for Greg Biffle. "It's the toughest short track we go to."

Campbell is proud of that reputation.

"It's a physical track,' he agrees. "They can bump and bang all race long, but the speeds aren't real high, so they probably aren't going to get hurt. And the fans enjoy it."