Today, the race is a part of the First Data 500 annual series of Martinsville races that occur in the autumn for the "NASCAR Sprint Cup Series". The race lasted three hours, fifty-eight minutes, and three seconds. Ten cautions were enacted by NASCAR for seventy-nine laps. The event had an attendance of 33,000 people. Attrition took its toll in this race, as there were only 10 cars left running at the end of the race. While the NASCAR Cup Series had progressed when it came to safety measures by the mid-1970s, a lot of the safety features that would make NASCAR safe and enjoyable at the same time only came after the death of Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500.