Smith ready to take over Martin's No. 01 Chevrolet

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Now that Mark Martin has all but guaranteed he won't be at Bristol next weekend, Regan Smith can get back to the business of focusing on making his Nextel Cup debut in the No. 01 Chevrolet.

The good thing? There's a good chance Smith could be in a car that's leading the owner's points. The bad thing? That's a lot to ask of a 23-year-old, already facing the pressure of 500 laps at Bristol in a type of car that's never been in race competition.

Smith has made 89 Busch Series starts over the past six seasons but his ninth-place finish at California three weeks ago was only his second top-10 finish. In the other three races, he failed to crack the top 25, including a crash at Las Vegas a week ago that left him 33rd.

"You can look at it as 'Holy cow, my car's leading the owner's points right now,' " Smith said Saturday before the Busch Series Nicorette 300 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. "On the flip side of that, you know how good a car you're getting, and that's a good thing.

"The guys and everybody on the team have been doing a great job this year and Mark's been doing a great job, so I just want to go out there and continue what he's been doing and get some good experience."

When it comes to experience with the Car of Tomorrow, Smith is basically starting out on equal footing, based on the Bristol test at the end of February. However, if the testing speeds are any indication, he may be ahead of the game. He was seventh fastest in the morning session on the first day and stayed in the top 15 overall.

"I wasn't very comfortable the first day. The second day, I got pretty comfortable with the car," Smith said. "It's different than the cars I'm driving right now. It's got a different feel. All in all, it's a racecar -- and a racecar's a racecar."

So what kind of a challenge will it be to make your Nextel Cup debut at Bristol in a brand-new chassis?

"I've never been in a race with any of these guys in the first place, so it's not any more of a challenge for me than it's going to be just running my first Cup race in general," Smith said. "I don't know if the [Car of Tomorrow] equals the playing ground any more for me or makes it even tougher yet. I can't answer that. Our main focus is to worry about doing our business and take care of what we need to take care of, on and off the track and see where that puts us."

During the whole "will he or won't he" scenario that played out over the last month, Smith said he tried not to let Martin's decision affect his preparation.

"It hasn't changed my approach at all," Smith said. "No matter what happened, I was going with the mindset that I was going to be in the car at that race and everything I was doing was to prepare for that.

"I think if anything, the way Mark's been running this year, it's pumped everybody up. It's pumped me up to know how good of a race car I've got."