Martin’s revival keeps drummin’

BY ALLEN GREGORY
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

BRISTOL, Tenn. – The Mark Martin revival continues.

To the delight of his fans and envy of his competitors, the 50-year-old workout warrior from Batesville, Ark., earned his fifth Sprint Cup pole of the season Friday with a lap of 15.414 seconds at 124.484 mph during qualifying for the Sharpie 500.

The last time Martin won five poles in a season was 1993. As usual, the humble Martin directed the attention to his crew chief Alan Gustafson and the Hendrick Motorsports crew.

“I’m just so grateful to Alan and everybody on this No. 5 team,” Martin said. “They dig so hard and want it so bad. It’s cool to be a part of their team.”

After running partial schedules the past two seasons, Martin currently leads all Sprint Cup drivers with four wins and ranks 12th in points.

“Just to lay it out, I have accomplished everything I had hoped to accomplish this year already, and much more,” Martin said. “The least difficult thing of all the things I had hoped to accomplish, I thought, would be making the Chase.

“And Alan and I are both confident in our performance from here forward. I’m not so confident in our luck, but I’m certainly confident in our performance and that’s all we can do.”

Martin has finished second four times in the Sprint Cup championship points race. A couple of those title bids ended in agonizing fashion.

Entering tonight’s race, Martin clings to his spot into the Chase by just a 12-point edge over Brian Vickers.

“In some ways, the tension has increased because we should be comfortably in instead of where we are,” Martin said. “[Gustafson] and I both are working as hard as we can to keep that minimized.

“It just would be devastating for my team to not be included in that elite group. But they have won more races than anyone else this year, so they can be proud of that.”

Martin has now won nine career poles at BMS. Friday’s quick lap may have been the sweetest.

“I feel like I just got a 200-pound gorilla off my back,” Martin said. “We got a great lap again.

“It’s huge. These guys give me such great race cars and we’re just trying to let our performance do our work for us.”

Greg Biffle earned the No. 2 qualifying spot with a lap of 15.436 seconds, with rookie Scott Speed in third.

Biffle is also locked into a points battle. He is currently 10th, just 30 points ahead of Martin.

“I’d like to see Mark Martin in the Chase, personally, but from competition wise, we know that they’re good and they’ll be a threat for the title,” Biffle said. “But I’m not going to pick and choose who I want to run against.

“All I can do is drive 100 percent as hard as I can.”

Speed continued a string of solid qualifying efforts at BMS.

“I guess this is a track where we qualify well ever since we’ve been coming here in the trucks,” Speed said. “It suits my driving style somehow.”

Dave Blaney and Matt Kenseth rounded out the top five qualifiers.

“We were so far off today, we didn’t get a chance to practice during qualifying,” Kenseth said. “We threw in [Biffle’s] setup and just got a really good lap there.”

Kyle Busch earned the No. 15, while fan-favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start from the 27th spot.

Earnhardt said he could never find a comfort zone in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

“I couldn’t get in the corner, it was really loose in and it would just push off,” Earnhardt said. “We will see how it goes. The Chevrolet was good in race trim. We couldn’t get anything going in qualifying trim.

“We will just have to be good on pit road and be smart on the race track, but I think we have a pretty good race car.”

Busch, currently 15th in the points battle behind Vickers and Clint Bowyer, was pleased with his qualifying effort.

“That was the best it’s been all day and the best I’ve ever had in a car in qualifying here,” Busch said. “It didn’t quite show the speed we were hoping for, but that was really good for the M&M’s Camry. 

“We’ve been trying so hard and we were good here in race trim – we know that, but qualifying trim we’ve sort of struggled. It should be a good starting spot for us. I’m excited about it and it will be better than what we’ve had here in the past anyway.”

Scott Wimmer, driving the familiar No. 4 Morgan-McClure Motorsports Chevrolet, earned the No. 26 qualifying spot in the Alpha Natural Resources Chevrolet.

Former Formula One competitors Max Papis failed to qualify along with Aric Almirola and Mike Skinner. Almirola’s car smacked the outside wall on his qualifying lap.

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