Drivers taking notice of Martin's part-time success (cont'd)

Martin splits his No. 01 car with rookie Regan Smith, seen as the heir apparent in the vehicle when Martin eventually steps down for good. Gordon can see himself slipping out of the driver's seat in the same manner, sharing time with a younger driver who will ultimately be his successor before turning his No. 24 car over to someone else. But that idea didn't fully crystallize until he witnessed the success Martin was enjoying this year.

"Every time I've always thought about it or brought it up to anybody, they're like, 'There's not a sponsor that's going to do that.' It's important, especially with the 24 team, to continue to race for championships. I'm not saying we could still pull it off, but it's something I would consider now," Gordon said.

Martin on standby

If points leader Jeff Gordon needs to skip a race to be present at his daughter's birth, Mark Martin will be there to take the wheel of the No. 24 car.

"Hopefully, it won't come to that," Martin said. "But I do admire Jeff for his commitment to be there when his daughter is born. I think it's awesome. It's a great position, and it's an honor, a real big honor that they thought enough of me to really pursue me."

"We wanted to have a backup plan, and the first person that we thought of was Mark Martin," Gordon said. "With the way we've been working with him at Hendrick, and with the Ginn team, we thought there might be interest. I put that out to him, and he's been very gracious. I hope we don't have to use him, but what an awesome opportunity for this DuPont 24 team to have a guy like that to step in for me if we needed him."

"That 24 team, they're a team that's always battled for the championship. I think they always will, whether I'm driving it or not driving it. If we maybe have a young, up-and-coming driver that we want to bring along slowly, that might be a great opportunity to do that, where I still race like Mark is and then we bring him in after that. That is a scenario I could possibly see, but I can't see that going for more than a year."

In Nextel Cup racing, there's one certainty -- anything that works gets copied. Gordon developed from a project into a champion, and young drivers became the norm. Ryan Newman won poles and races with engineering, and everyone rushed to add PhDs. Ray Evernham hired former athletes as over-the-wall pit crewmen, and others did the same. Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus used unorthodox setups to become title contenders, and everyone began stretching the edges of the technical envelope.

Martin's effort, former teammate Jeff Burton believes, will attract the same kind of attention. Past attempts at partial schedules, undertaken by champion drivers like Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte, started with hopeful intentions but fell flat. Now that Martin and Ginn have discovered a formula that works, everyone is watching.

"I think what he's done this year has opened some people's minds to doing something different from normal," Burton said. "I've got to tell you, I believe in my heart that for a young driver, running a full-time Busch series and running 10 or 12 Cup races is a great learning tool. And if you can do that with a guy like Mark Martin helping you, and your sponsor is investing in a young guy and wants to grow that guy, and you can bring a guy like Mark Martin in, why wouldn't you do that? I think it's a great idea. I think it works really well. I think you'll see more of it rather than less."

With a 231-point lead on the field and no signs of slowing, it appears Gordon can afford to take a week off in late June or early July and not endanger his chances of qualifying for the Chase. But even though Martin has shown that it's still possible for a driver to take an off week and still remain in contention under the current format, not many other drivers would be willing to take the risk.

"That would be a huge gamble to take a week off. A huge gamble," said Carl Edwards, another former Martin teammate. "... Having a kid, that's a pretty big deal. I don't think people are going to kick it on the porch and watch TV. Unless you're having childbirth or something like that, I'd imagine people are going to be at all of the races." (Continued)