Daily NASCAR

by Holly Cain

Filed under: Mark Martin, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Hendrick Motorsports

A revitalized and resurging Mark Martin won the back-pats and gotta-luv-it grins of NASCAR nation with his incredible five-win, championship runner-up effort in the 2009 season.

And he enters Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway ranked third in the Sprint Cup championship, looking every bit the contender at age 51 that he was at age 50. And age 40 and age 30, for that matter.

He won the pole position for the season-opening Daytona 500 and has two top-five finishes in the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet through the first three races, proving he’s still competitive on the race track even as his contemporaries have moved into the broadcast booth.

This isn’t a trek into the tired, age ol’ debate of whether NASCAR drivers are athletes. It’s an acknowledgment that Martin is and that others in NASCAR may be finally catching on.

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Jeff Gordon crossed the finished line unchallenged to win the 2004 Auto Club 500 at California Speedway, his third win at the track. (Photo: Sherryl Creekmore/NASCAR)

The first race at what was then California Speedway - and is now Auto Club Speedway in Fontana - was run on June 22, 1997, and won by Jeff Gordon. Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Terry Labonte, finished second in another Chevrolet, while positions 3-5 were all occupied by Ford drivers: in order, Ricky Rudd, Ted Musgrave and Jimmy Spencer. Gordon won two of the first three races at the track, which hosted only one annual race until 2004. The most recent of Gordon’s three victories occurred that year. Jimmie Johnson, another of Gordon’s teammates, has won four of the last six Southern California races and a record five overall.

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Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson talks with teammate Mark Martin Hendrick Motorsports cars have fared well and taken a beating so far at Speedweeks, with Martin winning the pole for Sunday’s Daytona 500 and Johnson winning the first Gatorade Duel on Thursday (and thus learning a No. 3 starting position in the same race). But cars of Martin, Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon have all sustained damage in practice, resulting in the cars being shipped back to Charlotte for repairs. (Photo: Getty Images)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Rain, cold and howling winds descended on Daytona International Speedway, washing out all but the most mundane of Friday’s activities.

Nationwide Series qualifying was washed out, but officials still held out hope that the NextEra Energy Resources 250, the Camping World Truck Series race, would could be run late on Friday night.

The DRIVE4COPD 300’s lineup was set by 2009 owner points, meaning that the top four positions are occupied, in order, by Kyle Busch in a Toyota, Carl Edwards in a Ford, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick, both in Chevrolets.

Tony Stewart, who won the Nationwide Series race here a year ago, starts the race in 31st place.

* * *

TO BUMP OR NOT– Jeff Gordon is only a cautious proponent of bump drafting, which he thinks is unwise in the turns.

Without any regulation by NASCAR officials, Gordon doesn’t think everyone will share his view.

"What would you do to win the Daytona 500? I think there are some guys out there who they know exactly what happens when they run into the back of somebody in the corners, but they’re willing to take the risk to try to win the Daytona 500," he said. "You certainly don’t mind moving a guy, and sometimes you have to do that, especially if it’s for the win.

"If it’s for 15th place, it doesn’t make any sense."

* * *

MIXED BLESSING- Thursday wasn’t an altogether successful day for Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who won a Gatorade Duel but wrecked a car during practice. Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon also sustained damage in practice.

"We’ve made some trips back and forth to Charlotte, haven’t we?" quipped Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus. "Between the ‘5 car’ (Mark Martin) wrecking a couple times, us and the ‘24′ (Gordon) …

"I know there’s another car in the transporter that we took back to Charlotte that will be coming back this evening, another ‘24′ car."

* * *

THE LONG RUN–Kasey Kahne, also a Duel winner, stressed the importance of handling as he looked ahead to the Daytona 500.

"Sunday is 500 miles," he said. "Handling is going to be a big part of Sunday. Everybody is pretty quick the first five laps, 10 laps, but that last 20-25 laps of a race run, handling will be big and it will get somewhat spread out, then a couple of cars will pull out, and that will get it stacked back up, and then it will get spread out again.

"I don’t think you’ll see, until probably the last 200 miles, that it will really get exciting again like maybe the Bud Shootout was."
 

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by Holly Cain

Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Daytona Int’l Speedway, Chase for the Sprint Cup

CONCORD, N.C. — Sporting a thick, new beard, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. calmly and thoughtfully endured and endeared in a preseason interview session with the racing press last month at the massive Hendrick Motorsports complex about five minutes away from Turn 1 of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

And the 35-year-old former Daytona 500 winner and NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver never once skirted the inevitable.

“I hate talking about last year, it was miserable,” Earnhardt said. “But I knew I’d have to answer some questions about what I’d do to get better; what did last year make me feel like.

“But you know, that’s how I ran so I have to own up to all that stuff. I’m looking forward to getting to the race track. I miss the track, the car, the environment, all the people.

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Daytona 500 pole winner Mark Martin (far right) with Dale Earnhardt Jr. (left), who won the outside pole in Saturday’s qualifier, with their boss Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports all smiles in the middle. (John Clark/NASCAR This Week)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Winning the pole hasn’t always guaranteed success in the Daytona 500. For instance, the driver who started out front a year ago, Martin Truex Jr., finished 11th in the season’s first race and 23rd in the Sprint Cup standings.

Recent pole winners have also included such luminaries as David Gilliland (2007) and Jeff Green (2003).

The odds are a little better this time around. The dominant team in NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports, put Mark Martin on the inside and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the outside of the front row for the Feb. 14 Daytona 500. A driver who gets considerable assistance from Hendrick, Ryan Newman, produced the third-best speed, and the reigning champion, Jimmie Johnson, was sixth.

Martin, 51, becomes the 500’s oldest pole winner.

"I’ve always loved setting records," he said. "Once upon a time, I tried to set records for being the youngest, and now I’m on the other side."

Under Daytona International Speedway’s unique qualifying format for the 500, only the top two nail down their starting positions in the first round. Martin’s No. 5 Chevrolet averaged 191.188 mph and Earnhardt’s No. 88 posted 190.913.

Chevrolet drivers posted seven of the 10 fastest speeds, the only exceptions being Bill Elliott, fourth at 190.573 mph in a Ford; Kurt Busch, seventh at 190.118 in a Dodge; and Kyle Busch, ninth at 190.050 in a Toyota.

* * *

UNAFRAID– Greg Biffle looks forward to testing the barriers of bump drafting, now that NASCAR has adopted the policy of letting its drivers set the standards themselves.

"I’m going to push until somebody spins out," he said. "That’s the only way to find out. We all know. We’re drivers. We know what the limits are. Now that NASCAR has said ‘we’re not going to be the limit,’ the limit becomes when the guy in front of you spins out … so we have to regulate that ourselves.

"Now we don’t have to worry about NASCAR. We can just ride on that limit."

* * *

THE YOUNG UPSTART - Brad Keselowski, entering his first full Sprint Cup season, won’t win any popularity contests among his peers, but he’s fairly unrepentant about past transgressions.

"My attitude toward racing is to do what it takes to win," he said. "I’d prefer to win honorably. I can’t always say that I’ve done that. Hopefully, we can put together strong enough cars this year to where we can win without drama. A goal of mine is to win a race and look back and nobody said, ‘He screwed me over to do it.’

"But at the end of the day, when I look my team in the eyes, I want to be able to say I took more than I gave. … If you have to make a few competitors mad along the way, that’s just part of it."

* * *

A BIT MORE MODERATE– Kurt Busch is a bit more cautious than Biffle.

"My approach will be similar to how I approached double-file restarts (a change in 2009)," said Busch, "and that was let this first event unfold … digest what I’m seeing and see how aggressive people want to be with it.

"At Daytona, you have to protect your race car to win the race. If you have torn-up fenders, you don’t have any opportunity to win."

* * *

NO BIG DEAL–Matt Kenseth isn’t overly concerned about bump drafting or NASCAR’s decision not to regulate it.

"I think there are still going to be rough-driving penalties if you have that, just like there are at every race, and really, the drivers do a pretty good job of policing themselves," he said. "You’ve got to race these guys for 38 weeks (36 Cup, two all-star), and you’re not going to go out and try to wrong somebody on purpose, or try co cause the wreck, or do any of that stuff, anyway.

"You’re, hopefully, going to stop before you get to that edge, no matter what track you’re at. … Nobody wants to wreck, and nobody wants to get wrecked."

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