The primary goal for Cup scheduling has gone like this: Find or build a track near a metropolitan area, and use that to build interest in yet another market. Think about the tracks that have made it on the schedule in the past 15 years or so, most all of them have that quality.

And of all the tracks on the schedule, Martinsville is the least like the others. The market it serves is essentially Lynchburg and Roanoke – and with all due respect to our friends in those two locales, even they would admit they have no business being mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas.

Darlington is much the same way, since one could argue that Pocono serves the Philadelphia market and – if you want to stretch it – the New York market as well. But Darlington has already had its marquee race taken away, as the Cup circuit heads to Fontana on Labor Day weekend.

Of secondary importance, unfortunately, is the quality of racing at Martinsville. It’s a difficult track to pass on, and any track with that label generally won’t produce good racing. Even the drivers don’t particularly care to run there. Again, one could make the argument that Pocono is not great racing, particularly since drivers don’t downshift going into Turn 1 anymore.

There’s also the matter that Martinsville generally isn’t an easy place to get to. It’s a pretty fair drive from I-81, the closest interstate.

That’s a lot of check marks in the bad column for Martinsville. And it all adds up to continued speculation that the track will lose a race. It may not be this year or even 2008, but the clock certainly seems to be ticking for Martinsville.

—APOLOGIES FOR NOT UPDATING yesterday. Sometimes, random things happen: Covering the Virginia State Girls Golf Open at Forest Greens yesterday took a little longer than I imagined. Then, upon getting back to the office, we learned that Falcons guard – and Woodbridge native – Matt Lehr had been suspended after violating the league’s substance abuse policy, so there was work to do on that.

Sometimes, it really is beyond my control.