2010 TUMS Fast Relief 500

The 2010 TUMS Fast Relief 500 was a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race that was held on October 24, 2010, at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia. It was contested over 500 laps, and was the thirty-second race of the season and the sixth race in the season-ending Chase for the Sprint Cup for the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The race was won by Denny Hamlin for the Joe Gibbs Racing team. Mark Martin driving for Hendrick Motorsports finished second and Richard Childress Racing's Kevin Harvick, who started thirty-sixth, came third.

During the race there were fifteen cautions and twenty-four lead changes among thirteen drivers. It was Hamlin's seventh win in the 2010 season and the fifteenth of his career. The result left him second in the Drivers' Championship, six points behind Jimmie Johnson. Chevrolet maintained its lead in the Manufacturers' Championship, forty-two ahead of Toyota and eighty-seven ahead of Ford, with four races remaining in the season.

Martinsville Speedway is one of five short tracks that holds NASCAR races. The standard track at Martinsville Speedway is a 0.526 miles (0.847 km) long, four-turn, short oval track. The track's turns are banked at eleven degrees while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at zero degrees. The back stretch also has zero-degree banking. The racetrack can accommodate 63,000 spectators.

Before the race, Jimmie Johnson led the Drivers' Championship with 5,843 points whereas Denny Hamlin stood in second place with 5,802 points. Third-placed Kevin Harvick had 5,766 points, seventy-nine ahead of the fourth-placed Jeff Gordon and hundred ahead of the fifth-placed Kyle Busch. Tony Stewart in sixth with 5,666 points, was twenty-three points ahead of Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle with 5,618 points was twelve ahead of Kurt Busch, and fourteen in front of Jeff Burton. Matt Kenseth and Clint Bowyer were eleventh and twelfth places with 5,587 and 5,543 points, respectively . In the Manufacturers' Championship, Chevrolet led with 230 points, forty-five points ahead of their rival Toyota. Ford, with 145 points, was twenty-three points ahead of Dodge in the battle for third place. Hamlin was the race's defending champion after winning it in 2009.

Three practice sessions were held before the Saturday race—one on Friday and two on Saturday. The first session lasted ninety minutes, the second session lasted forty-five minutes, while the third and final session lasted sixty minutes. During the first practice session, Stewart, who was racing for the Stewart–Haas Racing team, was the quickest ahead of Hamlin in the second position and Juan Pablo Montoya in the third position. Biffle came in fourth and David Reutimann finished fifth. Bowyer, David Ragan, A. J. Allmendinger, Gordon, and Joey Logano in that order rounded out the ten drivers who were quickest in the session.

After the practice sessions during qualification, forty-eight cars were entered but only forty-three was able to race because of NASCAR's qualifying procedure. Hamlin clinched the ninth pole position of his career with a time of 19.518 seconds. He was joined on the front row of the grid by Marcos Ambrose. Biffle qualified third, Ryan Newman took fourth, and Montoya started fifth. Johnson, one of the drivers in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, qualified nineteenth while Harvick was scored thirty-sixth. Michael McDowell, Johnny Sauter, Robby Gordon, and Terry Cook failed to qualify for the race while Dennis Setzer withdrew from qualifying. Once the qualifying session was completed, Hamlin commented:

We spent all day working on qualifying trying to get the pole—trying to get that first pit stall because obviously we do feel like it's very important. I think if I’m ahead of the 48 then I could possibly set the tone in whether he leads a lap or not. That's a 10-point swing. That's a little bit of it. It all starts today and that's where our strategy's at. Other than that, I plan on trying to go out there and lead the most laps and win the race—just like everyone else is.

The next morning, Brad Keselowski was the quickest in the second practice session, ahead of Bowyer in the second place and Harvick in the third place. Allmendinger was the fourth quickest, and Ambrose finished fifth. Burton, Jamie McMurray, Bobby Labonte, Ragan, and Johnson followed in the top ten in that order. Carl Edwards was twenty-sixth and Kyle Busch was twenty-seventh. During the third and final practice session, Biffle was the quickest with the fastest time of 19.799 seconds. Burton and Bowyer followed in second and third places with times of 19.866 and 19.867 seconds respectively. McMurray was the fourth fastest driver ahead of Harvick, who finished fifth, and Johnson, who finished sixth. Gordon finished seventh, Hamlin took eighth, Aric Almirola was ninth, and Mark Martin was tenth.