WRAL Sports Fan

NASCAR

Martin back in the hunt for NASCAR title

By SceneDaily.com

Nov 9, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas – Just when it appeared that Mark Martin’s bid for the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup championship might be over, Martin is back in the hunt.

A fourth-place finish in Sunday’s Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway combined with a 38th-place outing for Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson has revived Martin’s title hopes with two races left.

Martin entered the race trailing Johnson by 184 points but will head to next weekend’s event at Phoenix International Raceway 73 points behind the defending three-time series champion.

“It didn’t feel as good when I knew we didn’t have a chance,” Martin said. “It’s still a long shot because they have great performance. We can’t go outperform them seventy-some points but racing’s not over with yet. Jeff Gordon is breathing down my neck, Tony Stewart. We’ll have to see what happens here.”

Johnson’s finish came on the heels of a lap-three crash triggered when the cars of David Reutimann and Sam Hornish Jr. made contact off Turn 2, sending Hornish up into Johnson and Johnson back down into Hornish before heavy contact with the inside wall.

Martin was just ahead of the wreck and could see it in his rearview mirror, but it didn’t really change his strategy.

“From then on, what does it matter?” crew chief Alan Gustafson said. “What’s done’s done. So he was focused on getting us the best position we could possibly get and did a good job with that.”

Gordon, who started the race just eight points behind Martin, remained third in the standings but now trails Martin by 39 points after finishing 13th. Fifth-place Tony Stewart is seven more points back and 178 behind Johnson.

“I’ve still got my hands full for the top six positions with all those guys,” Martin said. “Two guys that have knocked me out of championships [Stewart and Gordon] are still breathing down my neck. So the race is still on, man.

“I don’t know why everybody tries to count this thing out and doesn’t just wait and watch. There’s still two races to go and still things can happen.”

Martin struggled with the handling of his car throughout the early portion of Sunday’s race but steadily improved thanks to adjustments and fast pit stops.

“Track position was the big deal,” Gustafson said. “Any time you get track position that helps and [we] got the car better and the pit crew did a great job pitting up a spot or two and then Mark would get a spot and then all of a sudden you’re up there in the top five. Then you’ve got some track position, you can go from there, so just a tough fight.”

Martin credited Gustafson for making the right calls to make his Chevrolet better. After falling as low as 16th following a pit stop under the race’s second caution, Martin had rallied to sixth just past lap 200. And he continued to climb from there.

“We were junk yesterday,” said Martin, who made a late green-flag pit stop for fuel along with most of the leaders. “We were not very good the first half the race and they hit on something and I was like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t change anything now’ because we were very competitive. We were a solid top-five car at the end.”

Up next for Martin is Phoenix International Raceway, a track where the 50-year-old driver dominated in April en route to his first victory with the No. 5 team.

An equally stout performance there next weekend could boost Martin’s title hopes even more.

“It’s nice to go back to that track,” Gustafson said. “That’s a track that we’ve had a lot of success with the 5 and Mark’s been great at through his career, so Phoenix is kind of a welcome site for us. I think we can go run good and compete to win.”