MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- It should be no surprise that the winners of the last eight races at Martinsville Speedway average 17 starts each at the short, paper-clip shaped half-mile oval.

Even Denny Hamlin, the Chase for the Sprint Cup contender in Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 11 Toyota who won here in the spring, despite having only six Cup starts at Martinsville, has hundreds of laps here in Late Model stock cars.

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I've been racing my whole life and I've felt like I was kind of slow and late, but truthfully I feel showing up at the Cup level in my mid-20's was really a blessing in disguise.

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-- JIMMIE JOHNSON

But experience still rules, according to two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who's won four of those eight races and who'll start on the pole for Sunday's Tums QuikPak 500 thanks to his lead position in the current Chase standings.

"Experience is everything," Johnson said early in the weekend. "I still feel like I'm learning more and more each year and learning how to deal with our sport and the challenges in it. Experience has done a lot for me.

"I feel in the next two or three years I'll be even stronger and better as time goes on. It's crazy. And I've been racing my whole life and I've felt like I was kind of slow and late, but truthfully I feel showing up at the Cup level in my mid-20's was really a blessing in disguise. I showed up at the right time, had a lot of experience and had matured in a lot of ways.

"I think watching some of these young guys come along, it's challenging for them. I'm not saying it can't be done, but they're going to have other challenges that I didn't experience. So I'll take the experience and I'll love to be competitive at 40 years old and racing for championships. And I really think it's possible."

Experience is not the only answer for Johnson, who in 13 career starts at Martinsville is riding a string of 12 consecutive top-10 finishes. He said experience has taught him patience, and at Martinsville that's key.

"I feel like in the past, and I'm hoping it continues this weekend, I've been able to take my time," Johnson said. "The first 20 laps on a set of tires, the field is very close. And then as the run goes on, tires give up, the rubber starts to lay down on the track and there are more lines and options out there to pass than you would think.

"A lot of guys aren't creative enough to look for it and to find it and they're just stuck in the same rhythm and the same line and I can see that, and know how I can adjust what I'm doing and find a way by. So after 20 or 30 laps, I get into a rhythm and things just click and go well. I can go on different parts of the track where guys are not, get position on them and work my way to the front."

That's called experience, and it should work everywhere from Martinsville to Homestead.

If the veteran Jeff Burton can get through Martinsville -- where he's won only one Cup race in 28 career starts -- and still be within sniffing distance of Johnson, he might have a realistic chance to score his first NASCAR national championship; and his experience is playing a great role.

"I think the biggest thing [experience] brings to me is the perspective of what we're trying to do here and a calmness that I've never had in my life," Burton, 41, said. "The age that I am to me is a great thing. I love the age that I am. I couldn't have the things in my life that I love so much if I'm not the age that I am and I couldn't have the experience without having been through the things I've been through and the only way to do that is to be the age that I am.

"To me, I look at my age as a benefit because I'm able to draw experiences. I'm able to watch other people's experiences and learn from them. I view it as an advantage, not as a disadvantage because I have a pool of information that's larger than a lot that I can use so to me that's actually an advantage."

As much as some people believe that age is just a number, Burton said it does have its plusses and minuses.

"At some point it does become a disadvantage -- there's no getting around that," Burton said. "I truly believe that at 41 I'm a better driver than at 25. Now, was I a good enough driver at 25? That's for someone else to decide -- but I believe that I'm better at 41 than I was at 25.

"Am I going to be better at 70 than I was at 41? Probably not, but physically our sport allows someone -- if you take care of yourself and you're committed -- you can be successful in this sport well into your 40s. I have no concerns if I'm emotionally able to put the effort into it. I have no concerns about being in my mid-40s being able to be competitive -- none whatsoever.

"I speak from experience in watching people that I respect. I watched my father compete in tennis. I've watched Mark Martin. I've watched people that I know are willing to put forth the effort and the people that I see that are willing to put forth the effort that they can still be successful."

As age increases, Burton did say, experience becomes not only a blessing, but a challenge.

"I don't think that something swoops down from the sky and says, 'you're 47, no longer for you.' I don't think it works like that -- I think it's individual. I think it boils down to physical, emotional -- most of it being emotional -- the dedication that you're willing to put into it.

"You've got to remember if you're 48 years old, you've probably been doing this for 40 years. There's hardly any racecar drivers that didn't start -- most drivers started when they were five, six, seven, eight, nine years old. If you're 50 years old you've been doing it for 40 years.

"Bringing the intensity level every day, I think that's what becomes difficult. Willing to put the effort in not just on the track on a Sunday but on a track somewhere on a Tuesday when it's 100 degrees somewhere, putting that effort in -- that's where it becomes harder, I think."

Greg Biffle, 38, says being "the old guy" is a relatively new experience for him, and that experience is a bigger issue than age.

"You take somebody like Clint Bowyer, probably, that has less years in Nationwide and Sprint Cup -- those guys could still make mistakes or do some things," Biffle said. "I'm just using him as an example because he's just a couple years into this series, but I raced the Truck Series for three years and the Nationwide Series for two and you see a lot of things over that period of time and you learn a lot of things about what you don't want to do and how you get yourself into trouble and how to stay out of trouble, so I think that kind of experience is just real valuable."