By Bill Marx
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
Here’s a look at the top five drivers and five to watch in Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. All statistical references are for Sprint Cup races at Martinsville unless otherwise indicated. Driver rating is based on the past nine races at the track.
1. Jimmie Johnson, 124.3. Johnson’s domination at Martinsville is as documented as it is indisputable. He has six wins, including five in the past six races. He also has won the past two weeks and leads Mark Martin by 90 points. Superman is a heavy favorite to win again this week.
2. Mark Martin, 91.7. The last of Martin’s two wins came in 2000. He finished seventh in March in his first start at the .526-mile paper clip since October 2006. Martin needs to finish ahead of Johnson, which he has done in the two Chase races Johnson hasn’t won. Finishing ahead of Johnson will be a challenge Sunday.
3. Jeff Gordon, 124.3. Gordon faces the same challenge as Martin but is 135 points off the lead and needs to finish way ahead of Johnson. Gordon’s ace in the hole is his record at Martinsville—he leads all active drivers with seven wins and has 21 top fives in 33 starts. How dominant are Johnson and Gordon at Martinsville? They have won 10 of the past 13 Cup races.
4. Tony Stewart, 114.1. Stewart has one of those three wins (April 2006) and two wins overall. In his column in this week’s issue of Sporting News Magazine, Stewart declares, “Nothing is over until we decide it is.” That may have worked in “Animal House,” but that’s Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus over there, not Doug Neidermeyer and Greg Marmalard.
5. Kurt Busch, 79.8. Busch has one win and two fives 10s in 18 starts. The rest of his record is a big ouch. He has seven finishes 31st or worse including in three of the past four races. He finished 18th in March. His last top 10 was in 2005.
5 to watch
6. Juan Pablo Montoya, 80.4. One of Montoya’s three top 10s in 17 starts on short tracks came at Martinsville. Montoya’s top-five run ended last week at Lowe’s. It will say a lot about how much Montoya has progressed in NASCAR if he finishes in the top five Sunday.
11. Denny Hamlin, 106.3. Hamlin won the only race Johnson didn’t win in the past three years (March 2008), and he finished second to Johnson earlier this year despite leading a race-high 296 laps. Hamlin has finished outside the top 10 once in eight races, and five of his finishes were in the top five.
18. Casey Mears, 67.7. Mears is driving for a job, which, in this case, means he is trying to impress a sponsor or sponsors to come on board for 2010. He finished seventh last week, but that was at Lowe’s, site of his only Cup win. He has three top 10s in 13 starts at Martinsville, where his inability to qualify well (25.5 average start) puts him in an immediate hole.
22. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 102.4. Junior is having a miserable season. Since finishing second at Talladega in April, Earnhardt has scored two top 10s—a span of 22 races. In 19 starts at Martinsville, Earnhardt has eight top fives, including a second in this race last year. He has top 10s in each of the past three races at the track, so perhaps Sunday will be a good day for Junior Nation.
25. Jamie McMurray, 87.7. McMurray also is driving for a job. Roush Fenway Racing must drop from five to four teams in 2010, and McMurray is the odd man out. He has the eighth-best driver rating and finished 10th in March for his eighth top 10 in 13 starts. McMurray is having the worst Cup season of his career. That top 10 is one of only three this season.
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