Martin wants to carry on driving for Ford in Trucks next year despite his future switch to Chevy with MB2 at the Cup level. (LAT Photo)

NEW TEAM COMING? Beyond adding Robby Gordon to the fold, there's a good chance that there may be another new Ford team in the Nextel Cup Series next season, sources said Friday at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Details remain sketchy, but sources said that the team would be an all-new outfit, not an existing team switching manufacturers as Gordon is.

MARTIN TO RACE FORD TRUCK? Even though he is leaving Roush Racing and Ford after 19 years to drive an MB2 Motorsports Chevrolet part-time next season in the Nextel Cup Series, Mark Martin has asked Ford if he can continue his plans to drive Roush's No. 6 Ford F-150 in some NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races next year. Martin planned to drive that truck in 2007, at least until the MB2 Chevy deal came up. Ford's racing boss, Dan Davis, said no decision has been made from Ford's end so far. "I didn't give him (Martin) an answer yet and we haven't actually decided what to do yet," Davis said Friday. "Maybe we need to get over the initial hurt of this whole thing and try to look at it in hard, cold business terms and that's what I would really like to do and be unemotional about it. Hopefully, as a team at Ford we'll sit down and try to figure out what to do."

MELLOWING OUT Jimmie Johnson, never one to fan the flames of controversy, downplayed last week's brouhaha with his soon-to-be-former teammate Brian Vickers, who won his first race Sunday after knocking out Johnson and race-leader Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on the last lap at Talladega. "It's racing," said Johnson. "It's like I've said all along. I know it wasn't intentional. We had a great opportunity to make up some points. But life goes on. We've got to worry about this weekend. Last weekend is last weekend, and it's all good." Asked if he and Vickers had chatted about the incident, Johnson added, "Yeah, we talked and everything's fine."

FULL DISCLOSURE As the media attention around the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series continues to grow, especially this time of year, many veteran drivers give responses that are more and more scripted and less and less illuminating. So when Reed Sorenson hoped out of his Chip Ganassi-owned Dodge after Happy Hour on Friday, it was almost refreshing to hear him complain of the car's mediocre performance. "Not very good," was how Sorenson described his Dodge Charger, which was 18th-fastest during Happy Hour. "We made a bunch of changes but couldn't really get anything to make a difference as far as the car's handling. We're going to kind of do some homework and make some changes tonight and see if we can get it better."

UNHAPPY HOUR Ryan Newman wrecked his Penske Racing South Dodge Charger in practice and was forced to go to a backup car. He was 11th quickest in final practice with the backup. "We just wadded one [car] up. It just swapped ends and there was no hanging on," Newman said. "The backup car is the same one we had here at the (Coca-Cola) 600 that was a fast car. I think we made some improvements on the car but we still got some more work to do. We'll definitely change some things overnight. I wouldn't say I feel pretty good yet. I just spun out all by myself in practice so I'm not feeling good about that. I think we can definitely make it better I just don't know if we can make it be good enough to be a top-five car."