Top 35 Owner Points Picture

There’s one spot up for grabs this week — 35th place –- and with it goes a guaranteed starting position in the 2010 Daytona 500.

The No. 34 team owned by Teresa Earnhardt currently ranks 35th with 2,667 points. The only team with a shot at taking the position is the No. 82 of Dietrich Mateschitz.

Mateschitz and driver Scott Speed, however, trail by 114 points. Speed, who has a single top five in his rookie season, will at least have to match his best performance of the year (fifth) to overcome the deficit.

Mark Martin’s Down But Definitely Not Yet Out

Mark Martin may trail Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson by 108 points entering Sunday’s Ford 400 finale but it’s not in his DNA to go down without putting every ounce of his skill and determination into the fight.

And who knows — witness the recent Indianapolis Colts-New England Patriots game — what could happen.

If anyone can stage a comeback, it’s the veteran Martin who, on nine occasions, has gained more than 108 points on Johnson. It happened most recently two weeks ago in Texas, when Martin’s fourth-place finish coupled with Johnson’s accident-troubled 38th, resulted in a net gain of 111 points.

Continue reading “Mark Martin has outside chance at Cup”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Only Mark Martin (No. 5 Kellogg’s/CARQUEST Chevrolet) stands between Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet) and arguably one of the greatest achievements in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history.

Johnson, following his seventh victory of the 2009 season at Phoenix International Raceway, carries a 108-point lead into Sunday’s Ford 400 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The lead isn’t insurmountable — Martin still can deny Johnson a record fourth consecutive championship — but all the leader has to do is finish 25th or better to lock up the title.

Johnson, seemingly coasting to the championship before a 38th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway gave fresh hopes to his pursuers, proved at Phoenix that his Lone Star State “hiccup” wasn’t a momentum buster. He rolled over the opposition (Martin finished fourth) by leading a whopping 238 of 312 laps to win the Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 for the third consecutive year.

Continue reading “Jimmie Johnson one race from history”

Amanda’s articles

By Amanda Vincent

NASCAR has pretty much always had both haves and have-nots among its roster of competitors, but increasingly, Hendrick Motorsports seems to be becoming the one have heads and shoulders over the have-nots

Other traditional haves in the sport, like Roush Fenway Racing and especially Richard Childress Racing seem to have fallen off their thrones at least somewhat in 2009. Roush Fenway does have three wins across its five Sprint Cup Series entries, but two of those were Matt Kenseth’s two victories in the first two races of the season. Roush hasn’t really been heard of since, except for one win courtesy of Jamie McMurray a few weeks ago. And this is with last season’s win leader on the Roush-Fenway roster — Carl Edwards who visited victory lane nine times a year ago.

The five-car organization only has two cars in the Chase, and one of the three Roush drivers on the outside looking in is Matt Kenseth — a driver who had been in the Chase every year since its inception until 2009.

Continue reading “Can anybody stop HMS?”