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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Two For One Equals Front Row
The blending of the 5 and 88 Hendrick Motorsports teams may be paying off already...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 09, 2010   Daytona Beach, FL
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Left) and Mark Martin (Right) will start on the front row for the Daytona 500. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. stood side by side in Daytona International Speedway’s victory lane last Saturday, smiles everywhere and the two hottest cars in the Daytona 500 field parked behind them.
Team owner Rick Hendrick (Center) want to bring together the No. 88 and No. 5 teams to form one winning unit. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

With a new season spread before them, they seemed to be almost equal parts of the greater whole that is Hendrick Motorsports, the NASCAR powerhouse that has had an iron grip on stock car racing competition for the better part of this century. Yet there is a gulf of sorts between them, and it is team owner Rick Hendrick’s mission to narrow – if not completely close – that chasm this year.

Last year’s performance profiles for two of NASCAR’s most popular drivers make the differences clear. Martin was second in points, won five races, had 14 top fives and 21 top 10s. Earnhardt Jr. was 25th in points, had no wins, finished in the top five only twice and in the top 10 only five times. It was his worst season as a Sprint Cup driver in what should be the heart of his career.

Hendrick said repeatedly in the offseason that his No. 1 goal – even beyond nailing down a fifth consecutive national championship – is blending the Nos. 5 and 88 teams (who work side by side in one shop at Hendrick Motorsports) into one successful unit, thus theoretically lifting Earnhardt Jr. to the heights enjoyed by Hendrick’s other drivers.

Although Daytona, being an animal unto itself, is not a good measuring stick, Hendrick could not have asked for a better start to the season than a Daytona 500 front row made up of the two drivers he hopes will cruise along with near-identical success this season.

If the new sense of teamwork continues, crew chiefs Alan Gustafson (Martin) and Lance McGrew (Earnhardt Jr.) will get much of the credit for, in effect, blending two working units into one force.

“It sounds very simple, but it’s very complex to get two racers, who typically are very egotistical people, to get along real well and cooperate in the direction of the shop,” Gustafson said. “For us, that’s the key. What we’ve got to do is get 85 people to produce as much as they possibly can. That’s how you’re the fastest. That’s how you’re the best. That’s how you win poles. That’s how you win races.”

It’s a change from last season, Gustafson said, when the 5 and 88 teams did not form the sort of cohesive unit called for by Hendrick protocol.

“It definitely was not as good as it needed to be,” he said. “We needed to improve. We needed to be more efficient. We needed to play off each other more. We needed to make that shop operate as one. We’ve done that now. It took a lot of work.

“Three months ago, you’re building this for the 5; now you’re building this for the 5/88. It’s a positive thing. There’s a lot of labor that goes behind it. This (winning the two front-row spots) is a quick shot in the arm for them to show that, hey, this is the correct path to go on. If we do follow this road, we’re going to be successful.”

McGrew said the two-for-one concept can carry both teams a long distance.

“The biggest thing is just the culture of our shop and how it works and the fact that last year when the cars got to assembly it was two separate teams – the 5 and the 88,” he said. “That is no longer the case. That’s why we made the changes we made in the offseason. Dale has seen the teamwork between Alan and myself. I think that’s going a long way.”

The next tests will be in Thursday’s 150-mile qualifying races for the 500. Martin will start first in one and Earnhardt Jr. first in the other.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.


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