Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing have combined to win the last nine Sprint Cup races at Martinsville Speedway.
The last driver to win at Martinsville for a team other than those three was Kevin Harvick in 2011 when he was with Richard Childress Racing.
Harvick, now with Stewart-Haas Racing, will look to continue the dominance of those three teams at the .526-mile track in this weekend’s STP 500.
The points leader enters having finished in the top 10 each of the past nine races, dating back to last season. No Cup driver has a current streak of more than two consecutive top-10 finishes.
Harvick, who nipped Carl Edwards for the win at Phoenix, has led a series-high 413 laps (31.5 percent of the laps run) and has an average finish of 4.0.
Harvick has four top-10 finishes in his last five starts at Martinsville.
“It’s a track where I feel like we could have won more races than we probably have in the record books,’’ Harvick said in a team release. “It’s a place where you enjoy racing and it’s very similar to Talladega by the fact that you just never know when something’s going to happen. You just never know when it can turn and that’s really what short-track racing is all about. And it’s something that happens a lot at Martinsville.”
RECENT WINNERS AT MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY
2015
Jeff Gordon … Hendrick Motorsports
Denny Hamlin … Joe Gibbs Racing
2014
Dale Earnhardt Jr. … Hendrick Motorsports
Kurt Busch … Stewart-Haas Racing
2013
Jeff Gordon … Hendrick Motorsports
Jimmie Johnson … Hendrick Motorsports
2012
Jimmie Johnson … Hendrick Motorsports
Ryan Newman … Stewart-Haas Racing
2011
Tony Stewart … Stewart-Haas Racing
Kevin Harvick … Richard Childress Racing