RIDGEWAY, Va. -- With the first Martinsville Speedway race of the year in the rear-view mirror, let's take a look at what we learned.
IVES' FIRST TWEET
No. 88 team crew chief Greg Ives joined Twitter in July 2014. He accumulated thousands of followers, but he remained silent on the social media platform.
Until Sunday evening, that is.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. had just taken a 21st-place start -- and an early-race incident that saw him go a lap down in 40th just 10 laps in -- and turned it into a top-15 finish.
And the driver was happy to see his crew chief get active on Twitter.
EARNHARDT, JOHNSON LOOKING FOR MORE
The run to a 14th-place finish was fun for Earnhardt as well, even if he wasn't pleased with the result.
"We had a good car," he said of the No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet SS. "The car was fun. We had good long-run speed. Just didn’t end up working out for us as far as the line we were in on our last restart."
Earnhardt found himself in the outside lane for the final restart after heading to pit road for two tires. The top eight competitors on the track stayed off of pit road, but Earnhardt said the decision didn't matter either way unless it resulted in restarting in the inside lane.
"The second-place guy, we passed him -- the No. 20 -- but the guy who started fourth where we would have started if we didn’t pit finished right in front of me," he explained. "So what do you do?"
Teammate Jimmie Johnson did get the opportunity to restart in the inside lane, and it meant he finished with a top-10 result in ninth.
Still, like his teammate, he was looking for even more.
"The first half of the day we were really good," he said. "We had some short-run speed, but would fade. Better than last fall, but need to get better yet.”
ELLIOTT TOP-20 IN RETURN
Last year, Chase Elliott climbed behind the wheel of a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series car for his very first points-paying race in the sport's premier series.
It came at Martinsville Speedway.
But an early-race incident forced Elliott to the garage for approximately 70 laps, and he ultimately earned a 38th-place finish.
"I’m just trying to look back on that and fix some of the mistakes I made and improve upon that," Elliott said before Sunday's race. "That’s all I can ask for.”
He did just that, battling all the way to the end of the race to take home a 20th-place result.