NASCAR: The best part of Martinsville you probably missed

While the focus was on the fight between Ty Gibbs and Sam Mayer, one underrated storyline should be getting more attention after the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway.

Following Friday night’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway, much if not all of the focus was on the pit road scuffle involving Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs and JR Motorsports’ Sam Mayer.

Gibbs and Mayer have a history of on-track incidents from past seasons in other series, so their last-lap contact while battling for the $100,000 Dash 4 Cash prize — a prize that ironically ended up going to Kaulig Racing’s A.J. Allmendinger — unsurprisingly caused tempers to flare.

Gibbs, who led 197 of the 261 laps around the four-turn, 0.526-mile (0.847-kilometer) oval in Ridgeway, Virginia, had led the field to the green flag on what turned out to be the final restart, but teammate Brandon Jones was able to get around him and hang on for his first win of the year.

But flying under the radar thanks to the mayhem was the driver who finished in second place.

Landon Cassill, who is in his 16th season competing in NASCAR on some level, earned arguably the best opportunity of his career thus far in the form of a full-time ride with Kaulig Racing for 2022, and he has made the most of it.

He secured a career-best runner-up result in his 184th career Xfinity Series start — and his 521st career NASCAR start.

Cassill’s second place finish behind Jones was his second top five finish in eight races this season. It was just the third top five finish of his Xfinity Series career, and it was just the fifth of his NASCAR career as a whole.

He finished in fifth place at Atlanta Motor Speedway earlier this season, and his previous career-high finish in the Xfinity Series had been a third place effort at Daytona International Speedway in 2011.

His lone top five finish in 329 Cup Series starts is a fourth place finish at Talladega Superspeedway in 2014, and his lone top five finish in eight Truck Series starts is a third place finish at the Milwaukee Mile in 2008.

So don’t let the Gibbs vs. Mayer incident take anything away from the 32-year-old Cedar Rapids, Iowa native’s achievement. And given how Cassill has run this season behind the wheel of the #10 Chevrolet, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him continue to record top five finishes, possibly even a win.