NASCAR: The biggest winner at Martinsville wasn’t Martin Truex Jr.

The biggest winner from Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race wasn’t Martin Truex Jr., who became the first two-race winner of the 2021 season.

It took until the eighth of 36 races on the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series schedule at Martinsville Speedway, but we finally have a driver who has won multiple races this season.

Thanks to Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr., who won for the third time in his last four starts at “The Paperclip” in Sunday afternoon’s rain-delayed Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500, the 2021 season will not become the first season since the 2003 season to see eight different winners in the first eight races.

Truex also won last month’s race at Phoenix Raceway to become the fifth different winner through five races.

He won Sunday’s race after making a late pass on teammate Denny Hamlin and holding off Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott.

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Truex led only 20 of the 500 laps around the four-turn, 0.526-mile (0.847-kilometer) oval in Ridgeway, Virginia, but he led the final 16 to collect his third grandfather clock.

As a result, he technically became the first driver to lock himself into the playoffs. The playoffs have long been seen as “win and in”, but with 26 regular season races and 16 playoff spots, that is not mathematically accurate.

We’ve never seen 16 different regular season race winners, but that possibility was deemed far more likely in 2021 than it had been in any prior season under the current playoff format simply because of the fact that this is the final season for the Generation 6 car.

The first seven races, which saw seven different winners, backed that up.

With the 16 playoff spots going to the regular season points champion plus the 15 drivers with the most wins, winning two races is technically the only way to secure a playoff spot, provided there are still enough races left in the regular season to produce more than 16 different winners.

There can be no more than 13 drivers with two victories during the regular season, so all two-race winners are guaranteed to finish in the top 15 in race wins by the time the playoffs start.

So Truex is now locked into the playoffs, while the other six race winners this season still technically could fall out of the playoff picture.

Front Row Motorsports’ Michael McDowell won the season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway before Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell won at the Daytona International Speedway road course.

Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Kyle Larson won at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, respectively, and Team Penske teammates Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano won at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway, respectively.

But Truex wasn’t the biggest winner of the race weekend at Martinsville Speedway.

That would actually be McDowell.

Yes, the same McDowell who crashed out of this race, netting him his first DNF in the last 13 events going back to last season. He finished in a season-worst 31st place.

How so?

If there are more than 16 winners in the regular season, the tiebreaker among one-race winners to get into the playoffs is points.

Six of the seven race winners so far this season are in the top 10 in the point standings. But not McDowell; he sits down in 16th place and has dropped 12 positions in the last five races, a span in which he has finished no higher than 12th and his average finish is 20.4, after starting the season with a win and two other top eight finishes.

So if there was any one race winner, among those from the first seven races, who would be in trouble if there do end up being more than 16 regular season race winners, that would clearly be McDowell.

All the others drive for one of three powerhouse teams, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske, and should have no issue getting into the playoffs regardless.

Let’s be honest; Truex was headed to the playoffs anyway, despite only now officially “clinching” a spot, and those others should be as well.

And that’s exactly why McDowell should be breathing a sigh of relief that it was Truex who won Sunday’s race.

Sure, there will probably be more drivers who get their first wins of the 2021 season before the regular season ends.

Hamlin, Elliott, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick and Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski are all 0 for 8 to start the season after going 25 for 36 last year, a season that only saw one three-race stretch during which none of them found victory lane, and there are several other winless drivers who are fully capable of taking the checkered flag.

But from this point forward, any race that produces a repeat winner will be like a breath of fresh air for the driver of the #34 Ford, considering his playoff hopes will likely hinge solely on keeping the regular season winner total at or below 16.

Of course, nobody expects McDowell to be a factor in the playoffs if he does get in, and let’s face it; his Daytona 500 win is going to be the highlight of his season no matter what.

However, taking himself, that #34 team and the Front Row Motorsports organization to the playoffs would still be quite an achievement to celebrate by the time September rolls around, even if they get knocked out in the round of 16 like most expect.

How many drivers will have been victorious in 2021 by the time the regular season is scheduled to come to a close at Daytona International Speedway in late August? There are 18 races remaining on the schedule until the start of the four-round, 10-race postseason at Darlington Raceway in early September.