Frustration expected in chase of Tyler Reddick at Martinsville

When the NASCAR Cup Series rolls across the Virginia state line this week and checks into venerable Martinsville Speedway, competitors will not find anything different in Sunday's Cook Out 400 that they haven't encountered before. Because it's Spring in southern Virginia, and that means the start of the short-track season, though it is rather shortened — too brief, to be honest — in its current state. Back in the day, there truly was a stretch — three-quarters of a month — when NASCAR visited its moonshining roots in North Carolina and neighboring Tennessee and Virginia, usually in the year's fourth month but sometimes in the previous one.

This time it's March, and it's not three visits. It's two. The 400-lapper at the half-mile Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR's oldest venue that opened in 1947, is the first of just two back-to-back races on bullrings less than a mile in length.

Let's just call this stop in Martinsville and the day race in Bristol a "Fortnight of Fun and Frustration" because short-track racing is usually straight-up fun, though the races will be two weeks apart and not on consecutive weekends because of Easter. It would be hard to ignore the growing frustration as one driver dominates the show. Let's start with Chevrolet's struggles.

Through six races, the manufacturer has recorded 11 top-five finishes, which may sound like a lot, nearly two per race, but it has been hard to get all the way up front. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. , Shane van Gisbergen and Chase Elliott have each posted runner-up finishes at Daytona, COTA and Vegas, respectively, but the bow-tied hotshoes have not been able to take their cars to Victory Lane.