Truex bounces back from Chase elimination to win pole

Johnson earned one of four spots in next month’s title-deciding season finale Sunday with his ninth career victory at Martinsville Speedway.

Sunday’s race will be televised on NBC.

The tight.526-mile Virginia short track kicks off the Round of 8 and Logano believes performing well on Sunday could be a very important key in the title race.

First, Johnson tied Jeff Gordon with nine wins at Martinsville Speedway. Some drivers are racing for their jobs.

Truex Jr. looked to be one of the favorites to win the title as he dominated the round of 16.

A year later, Logano has a new perspective about the soap opera that fueled the Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship.

There was a time this summer when a seventh championship seemed out of reach for Jimmie Johnson.

Denny Hamlin also is great at this track, winning five times in his career. The Round of Eight opener will likely be Gordon’s final NASCAR race.

Voda: Absolutely! They made it further and I thought they had a better season than a lot of people would have predicted. Allmendinger started inside of the top-10 and was able to come home with a top-10 finish. I am going to worry about getting a win and just try to be respectful racing around the top guys, ” Biffle said. And one week later, on cue, 2014 series champion Kevin Harvick should claim victory at Phoenix International Raceway to secure a spot in the four-driver championship for the third consecutive year.

That identity died in the last decade when Sprint Cup team owners and drivers began slowly seeping down into Saturday races before finally launching an all-out invasion. He led six laps, including the final four, to beat Brad Keselowski and win the race. Well, he had a little help.

A scoring snafu caused a lengthy caution during Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway. Then there is Phoenix in a couple of weeks and we won there past year.

Now, the 26-year-old Logano is back for another shot in a bid to capture the sport’s biggest prize. He finished 15th here in the Spring and if you throw out last October’s Joey Logano run in, his finishes here are 4th, 6th, 6th, and 2nd and he enters Martinsville this weekend at 7-1 odds to win.

Straight years the Chase race at Talladega has had a green-white-checkered finish or a caution flag on the final lap.

Five of the eight remaining Chase drivers qualified inside the top 12. It’s probably good for us. It is what happens in the race that really makes the difference. The first Chase driver to finish automatically advances to the final round of 4. “The spotlight is on the Chase guys, which it should be, but at the same time we want to race hard and show that we can still have some fun and be competitive at the racetrack”.

It wasn’t quite the 100-plus cars that will be on track competing over the course of the three races during Ford Championship Weekend November 18-20, but for now it was nice to have. Truex responded with a pole-winning run for Martinsville, and he’s determined to close out the season with a string of wins to replace his championship disappointment. That number one pit stall at Martinsville is gold, it is gold. Once the Chase got underway, Truex won two of the first three races to top the standings heading into the second round.

Johnson is trying to make the championship race for the first time in this format, and a win Sunday would get him an automatic berth.

Each race victor at Martinsville takes home one of NASCAR’s most coveted trophies.