NASCAR Cup Series 2021 35 2021-10-31 2021-10-31 https://r2.thesportsdb.com/images/media/event/thumb/oabriy1632942049.jpg https://r2.thesportsdb.com/images/media/event/poster/kf1vng1632942029.jpg The Xfinity 500 is a NASCAR Cup Series stock car race held at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, the other one being the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 in May, The race has been run in every NASCAR Cup Series, starting with the inaugural 1949 season, making it the oldest NASCAR race still run today. It is the ninth race of ten in the Cup Series playoffs, and the final race of the Round of 8. Starting 2015, NBC has the rights for the final 20 races of the season (19 of 20), including this race. Chase Elliott is the defending winner of the event. Alex Bowman took the checkered flag in Sunday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway after sliding up into Hamlin’s race-leading Toyota on Lap 494 of 501 and knocking Hamlin’s car up the track and into the outside wall. “I just got loose in,” Bowman said of the accident that gave him the lead. “I got in too deep (into Turn 3), knocked him out of the way and literally let him have the lead back. For anybody that wants to think I was trying to crash him, obviously that wasn’t the case, considering I literally gave up the lead at Martinsville to give it back to him. By the time Bowman took the checkered flag, his teammate, defending Cup champion Chase Elliott already had clinched a spot in next Sunday’s Championship 4 race at Phoenix by sweeping the first two stages of the event. Elliott joins another teammate, two-time Round of 8 winner Kyle Larson, Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. in the quartet that will vie for the series title at the one-mile track in the Sonoran Desert. 1083565