By Reid Spencer

Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

FORT WORTH, Texas -- As a Nationwide Series owner and a Sprint Cup Series driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr. welcomes the introduction of the sporty new Nationwide car, which will debut in July 2010 at Daytona and will appear in three subsequent oval races during next year's phase-in.

Earnhardt thinks the development of the new Nationwide car -- which features a spoiler instead of a rear wing and a traditional front-spring suspension instead of the bump stops characteristic of the Cup car -- may lead long-term to improvements to the Cup version.

"The (Cup) car's got a lot of potential, and I think we're actually going to learn a lot from its little stepbrother, the new Nationwide car that they're testing," Earnhardt said Wednesday night at an appearance for Shell Oil Company and Quaker State in Las Vegas. "I think they'll learn a lot from it.

"Whether they want to admit it or not, they built the Nationwide car in lieu of all the mistakes that they made in production with the COT (new Cup car). So, once we see how well this Nationwide car runs -- which I think it will do really well -- we may start seeing some changes to the COT.

"But, for the most part, the (new Cup) car does everything we intended it to do. You're just never satisfied as a driver, no matter how good the racecar is. We're always wanting to make the sport better, just like NASCAR and the drivers really want the best for the sport. Hopefully, we can keep doing that."

BURTON SUFFERS CRASH IN PRACTICE

Jeff Burton slammed the outside wall during Friday's Cup practice and will start Sunday's Dickies 500 in a backup car. Casey Mears is replacing Burton in Richard Childress Racing's No. 29 Chevrolet for Saturday's O'Reilly Challenge Nationwide Series race.

"My head hurts," Burton said later Friday afternoon. "Just kind of a crappy way to start off. We were really fast in race trim. I was really happy with the car. It wasn't an error or anything like that. What we think happened was something with the power steering. I just couldn't turn it. I wasn't strong enough to turn the thing. It went straight. It was like it blew a right-front tire, but it didn't blow a right front. I just couldn't get it turned. It missed the soft wall and hit the back then smacked the front. It dazed me. I'm OK. …"

Burton said he could have raced in the Nationwide event, but owner Richard Childress chose to hold him out of the event for safety's sake.

"Honestly, Richard came to see me right after the wreck, and he made the call," Burton said. "I'm good with that. That's just how Richard is. He wants to make sure I'm OK. What we are trying to do is build to win the (Cup) championship in 2010 and are using the last four races to build to on that.

"So we don't want to do something that will jeopardize me, and Richard made that call. He did that solely for my well-being, and I don't like it. But I appreciate the hell out of it, because he just wants to make sure that I don't do something stupid -- because he knows I probably would."  

MARTIN: WE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

To hear Mark Martin talk at Texas, the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet is realistic -- and resigned to finishing no better than second in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Martin's hope for a first championship took a serious blow in a wild wreck last Sunday at Talladega. On the final green-flag lap of the Amp Energy 500, Martin's Chevy turned upside-down after being blindsided in a 13-car collision.

Though Martin said he would have preferred to go down racing, he was generous in his praise of teammate Jimmie Johnson, who leads Martin by 184 points with three races left in the Chase.

"Obviously, the performance of the No. 48 has been phenomenal, and we've given it a good fight, but we haven't quite matched their performance -- although we gave him a pretty good run until Martinsville and Charlotte," Martin said. "That's all we can do. …

"I want to go down racing and not like that (at Talladega). But you know what, we raced. We raced all day. We raced like we just couldn't be in a wreck. I was in one I didn't even see. I never even knew I was going to be in that wreck until I was turning over. So, what the hay?"