CupScene.com

(By Greg Engle)

Posted: Sunday,March 29th, 2009

(By Bill Marx, Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service)

All the talk this past week–shoot, the entire Sprint Cup season–of the need to split up Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his crew chief/cousin, Tony Eury Jr., obscures two noteworthy facts:

First, Earnhardt is a mere 66 points out 12th place, the final Chase-eligible position, and second, there are 21 races before the field for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup is set in September at Richmond.

On Wednesday, team owner Rick Hendrick made it clear on a national teleconference he was not going to split up the two juniors. “I am 100 percent behind this group,” Hendrick said. “I have no intentions of making any changes. I have all intentions of making it better.”

Although Earnhardt has only one top-10 finish in the first five races, the No. 88 team has been making progress. Since experiencing an engine failure in the second race and finishing 39th at Auto Club Speedway and dropping to 35th in the standings, Earnhardt has finished 10th, 11th and 14th to move to 19th in the points standings.

Is Earnhardt’s start below expectations? Certainly. Is his season over? Hardly.

“This year has been a slow start,” Hendrick said. “But look at Mark Martin, a guy that I wanted to have an opportunity to come win a championship. And then we have some mechanical problems that normally we don’t have that’s put them behind (31st in the standings).

“This is a tough sport, and I look at guys you’ve always got to beat at Bristol (last week’s Cup race), Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, they are always there at the end and they were struggling. Nobody is immune from kind of having some problems.”

Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at .526-mile Martinsville Speedway is a good track for Earnhardt to continue his surge and reinforce the confidence he received from Hendrick. Earnhardt finished second at Martinsville last fall and has eight top-five finishes in 17 races.

“We’ve had a lot of good finishes here the last couple years at Martinsville, and you enjoy going there,” Eury said. “And as long as it’s one of the tracks you enjoy, you tend to run really good there.”

Five to watch

Kurt Busch, No. 2: Busch, who is second in points behind Gordon, is strong on short tracks (seven career wins) with one win at Martinsville. But his record in his past six races at the track is poor: 25.0 average finish, including three straight finishes in the 30s.

Denny Hamlin, No. 11: Hamlin, a native of Virginia, won this race last year. Martinsville holds special meaning to him, and it’s reflected in his racing: four top fives and a sixth-place finish in his past five races there.

Kyle Busch, No. 18: Busch picked up his second win at Bristol last week. He has been inconsistent at Martinsville: He finished fourth twice there in 2007 but last year finished 38th and 29th.

Jeff Gordon, No. 24: Gordon is one of the best all time at Martinsville, where he has seven wins and 20 top-five finishes. He hasn’t finished outside the top five since September 2004 when he finished ninth.

Jimmie Johnson, No. 48: Johnson is equally stout at Martinsville, where his 5.6 average finish is second-best all time among drivers with at least 10 starts. He has five wins and has finished worse than ninth once in 14 races.

Track chatter

Tony Stewart: “You try to stay off the brakes as much as possible. You always hear the crew chief talking about floating the car into the corner, and what they mean by that is instead of driving it really deep into the corner and using a lot of brake pressure, the theory is to lift a little earlier and use less brake pressure. You’ll end up running virtually the same lap time as you would if you drove hard into the corner. But when you’ve got a 500-lap race at Martinsville and you’ve got to use the brakes hard twice a lap, that’s 1,000 times during a race where you’re asking that brake system to slow down a 3,400-pound racecar. If you can be easy on those brakes for the first half of the race or first three-quarters of the race, then when you really need those brakes to battle for the win at the end–you’ve got them.”

Sam Hornish Jr.: “Racing at Martinsville Speedway reminds me of racing go-karts when I was growing up. We used to run indoor hockey venues. Martinsville always reminds me of those smaller tracks like that. You can count on there being a lot of beating and banging on every restart at Martinsville, and there is always someone right there on your inside.”

Clint Bowyer: “It’s a short track, but it’s not like any other short track you’ve ever been to. It goes against everything your tendencies tell you to do. You have to back the corner up, you have to let the car roll way around the corner before you get back on the gas. Your tendencies are to get in the corner as deep as you can and get back on the throttle as fast as possible. Those are two things that are catastrophic there, so you’ve got to discipline yourself and stay disciplined throughout the race.”

Fast facts

What: Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500
Where: Martinsville (Va.) Speedway
When: Sunday, 2 p.m. ET
TV: Fox, 1:30 p.m.
Radio: MRN/Sirius Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: .526-mile concrete oval
Race distance: 500 laps/263 miles
2008 winner: Denny Hamlin
2008 polesitter: Jeff Gordon
Points leaders: 1. Jeff Gordon, 794; 2. Kurt Busch, 718; 3. Clint Bowyer, 715; 4. Kyle Busch, 709; 5. Carl Edwards, 665; 6. Kasey Kahne, 639; 7. Tony Stewart, 633; 8. Denny Hamlin, 631; 9. Jimmie Johnson, 627; 10. Matt Kenseth, 610; 11. David Reutimann, 607; 12. Kevin Harvick, 584.