Photo by: Sarah Crabill

Clint Bowyer snapped a winless streak that spanned almost six years, dating back to October of 2012, on Monday, March 26th, after an overnight snowstorm on Saturday caused the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway to be delayed by one day.

Bowyer led 215 laps before earning his ninth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory of his career, ending a drought of 190 races without a win. The victory is also the Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s first at the .526-mile track.

 “We learned last year,” Bowyer said of the 2017 season, his first season with SHR after co-owner Tony Stewart retired from NASCAR competition. “Obviously, Harvick came on strong at the end of last year, but it was a learning year for our team and the 14 bunch.”

Bowyer won by a 1.146 margin-of-victory over runner-up Kyle Busch, who gained the points standings lead from Martin Truex Jr. by eight points.

“We just tried to maintain and keep ourselves in the right position, in the right spots all day long on the long runs and save our stuff as much as we could to see if we couldn’t mount a charge late in the going,” Busch said.

But it wasn’t enough for the 32-year-old. Busch finished second for the third time in the last four races after leading 24 laps. 

Ryan Blaney, Truex, and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top-5. Blaney led 145 laps and earned the Stage 2 victory before bringing his Menards / Libman “Cleaning Since 1896” Ford to a third place finish.

“It was a good showing for us, for sure. I think the track tightened up a good bit there towards the end and we just got a little bit behind. Congrats to Clint for winning that race.” Blaney said, “It was fun racing with him for a bit, but for us to come out of here and lead a bunch of laps, win a stage and run third here at Martinsville – where I usually run terrible – that says a lot about this team and the preparation that they did getting ready for this race. That’s nice to have, we just need to be a little bit better.”

Joey Logano finished sixth, Alex Bowman earned his first top-10 of the season with seventh, while AJ Allmendinger, Chase Elliott, and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-10.

The lone caution for an incident occurred on Lap 384 when the No. 1 of Jamie McMurray and the No. 3 of Austin Dillon made contact going into Turn 2. The contact caused McMurray to spin. McMurray later suffered a tire rub and was forced to pit. McMurray finished 26th, five laps down.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series have a week off for Easter, but return on Sunday, April 8th at Texas Motor Speedway. Jimmie Johnson earned his first victory of 2017 at the 1.5-mile track one year ago. Can he repeat again? Will a young gun earn a win? Or will someone earn their first career victory?