CUP: Hendrick Teammates Square Off Again

Sprint Cup

CUP: Hendrick Teammates Square Off Again

Mark Martin trails his teammate Jimmie Johnson by just 12 points...

Tom Jensen | Posted October 14, 2009 Charlotte, NC

Mark Martin (Left) lost the points lead at California and now trails his teammate Jimmie Johnson (Right) by 12 markers heading to Lowe's Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

For the first time in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, Mark Martin finds himself heading into a race not leading the points.

Martin isn’t in a big hole, mind you. He’s a mere 12 points behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson. But given that Johnson’s won three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championships and Martin is still looking for his first title to go along with four runner-up finishes, Johnson is the acknowledged favorite as the season winds down.

The fact that Martin is out of first place at this juncture of the season is rather amazing considering his performance so far. Martin opened the Chase with a victory in New Hampshire, finished second at Dover, seventh at Kansas and fourth last Sunday in Southern California.

That’s an average finish of 3.5 in four races and it still hasn’t been good enough to keep Martin in the points lead.

Most drivers would be profoundly frustrated by such a state of affairs, but not Martin. He’s maintained all along that this year he was competing for race victories and not for a championship.

This week, Martin will attempt to run down Johnson at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, a track where both men have enjoyed considerable success. Martin has four victories here and Johnson five, with each of them among the favorites again for Saturday night’s NASCAR Banking 400.

With Hendrick Motorsports located just two miles from the track, this is a place where the team pulls out all the stops each time it races here. Then again, given that Hendrick drivers have three victories and three runner-up finishes in the first four Chase races, it’s not like they’ve been leaving anything on the table lately.

Needless to say, the team is looking for big things again under the lights on Saturday night.

“I really like this racetrack,” said Martin, who also has won two Sprint All-Star Events here. “From the first time I raced on it, it just was a natural fit. Lowe’s reminds me a lot of the banked dirt tracks I would run back home, only a lot bigger of course.”

For his part, Johnson has gone from unbeatable at Lowe’s to merely OK once the track was repaved a few years back. But he feels like the team has gotten its mojo back at Lowe’s and would like nothing more than to win for the third time in the Chase.

“I think we are a little smarter even from the All-Star and the Coca Cola 600 weekend,” said Johnson, who is seeking a record fourth straight championship. “We're smarter now than we were then and hopefully it makes a difference.”

And lest Johnson or Martin slip, fellow Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon is also a five-time LMS winner. And he’s finished second in each of the last two Chase races at Kansas and California.

“I feel like Charlotte's a good track for us, and I'm looking forward to going there,” said Gordon, who is fifth in points, 105 back of Johnson. “And hopefully we can make up the ground that we're lacking.”

As for the championship, Martin’s still shying away from talking about it.

“I have a lot of confidence in the performance of this race team and (we’ll) see how it works out,” said Martin. “Right now, we are not really focused on all of that down the road, we are focused on the racing and going to let the racing decide.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED, and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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