MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- A.J. Allmendinger left Martinsville Speedway Sunday evening still with no idea what he'll be doing next season.

But he made another strong statement that he ought to be somewhere in Sprint Cup racing in 2009 by nearly matching the best finish this season by the Gillett Evernham Motorsports No. 10 Dodge when he finished 15th.

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I don't really have any direction -- I've talked to everybody. I've gotten a lot of great phone calls, and hopefully that will lead to something.

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A.J. ALLMENDINGER

"[Martinsville] wouldn't have been the first track I'd have picked to come to with a new team, but I'm looking forward to Atlanta and Texas, because I've been pretty good there -- so we'll see what happens," Allmendinger said. "Overall, [Sunday] was a good, solid day. I think if we could have got that [free pass] at the end when Reed [Sorenson] spun -- I wasn't trying to race the leaders and I was running right with them."

The icing on the cake was that the TUMS QuikPak 500 was the first start in the car for Allmendinger, who's been Sprint Cup's version of a pinball the last few weeks. Allmendinger's been hired to drive the car in the last five races this season before GEM brings on current Ganassi Racing driver Sorenson.

"The chemistry on the team is good and Gillett Evernham builds great cars," Allmendinger said. "They're a good team, I just think they needed to get steered in the right direction and I'm not saying I'm the guy that's going to be able to do that, but hopefully I can give them a good direction. To get a top-15 ... that's good."

It's perfect for Allmendinger, who's seriously ride-shopping.

"I don't really have any direction -- I've talked to everybody," Allmendinger said. "The way I look at it, it's been such a struggle and to come to a team that actually wants you and takes a look at my talent and thinks I might be able to help them go in the right direction just gives me a lot of confidence and I can go out there and more than anything, just relax and have fun.

"If you go out there and make a good impression on these guys, and Michael Waltrip Racing -- who knows? I've gotten a lot of great phone calls, and hopefully that leads to something."

The last few weeks, Allmendinger's proven he's got some fire in him. Four races ago at Kansas, in what ended up being his last race for Red Bull Racing, he scored his first career top-10 finish.

He sat out the race at Talladega when Red Bull elected to go in a different direction while preparing for ex-Formula One driver Scott Speed's Sprint Cup debut at Martinsville. Allmendinger was then hired by Michael Waltrip Racing to attempt to move its No. 00 Toyota back toward the top 35 in the owner standings at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

But Allmendinger admitted he made a mistake and crashed, becoming the first car out.

So his comeback at Martinsville, which he himself described as an unlikely venue to expect much, considering his average start and finish in two races on the half-mile paperclip last season were 35th and 31st, respectively, was a revelation -- both for Allmendinger and his team.

"This doesn't make up for [Lowe's] because I'm still disappointed in that," Allmendinger said. "I really wanted to get that 00 car in the [owner] points and I feel bad about it -- but they said they were happy that that thing was passing racecars and I may wreck every now and then, but I'm never going to wreck just sitting back. I'm always going to be going for it and it's just something that happened."

Martinsville didn't just happen.

"It's one of those things that it's not like it's a great track for me," Allmendinger said while conducting an interview by the side of his hauler and accepting congratulations from a continuous stream of teammates. "Last year I made both races, but the car was never really good, so I never got that racing background of what it's like to really be here -- I was just kind of riding around.

"So for me it was something new, and [the crew] did a good job all day. The pit stops were awesome -- we just kept getting blocked in and that's what made it look bad. The pit stops were fantastic so it was a good building [process]."

The low point of the race actually came on the final green-white-checkered restart, when Allmendinger lost a spot to Juan Montoya, which cost him a shot at equalling Patrick Carpentier's best finish, 14th.

"We really didn't need that yellow, because I had Juan covered," Allmendinger said. "He just banzais you when he gets close -- kinda like an idiot -- so it's one of those things where I didn't want that restart because I knew he was going to go down there and drill me, like he did, and move me out of the way. But we were quicker, and overall it's a good finish."

For GEM's No. 10 crew, led by first-year Cup crew chief Mike Shiplett, Allmendinger's run was a breath of fresh air in a season in which there were plenty of high points with first-year Cup driver Carpentier -- as well as some disappointments, including falling out of the critical top 35 in the owner standings.

"I was really pleased with our car's performance," Shiplett said. "We went and tested during the week and really tried to understand what A.J. needed in the car and we had two really good practices on Saturday.

"We've always had really good cars, but we just haven't been able to get everything out of them that we needed. I think this just shows that the organization as a whole has good cars -- we just need the right situations to get good finishes out of them."

It's got Shiplett and his crew anticipating getting to Atlanta next week and Texas and Homestead after that, tracks that are similar to where Allmendinger has had some of his best runs in a career that only has 40 starts.

"Our goal was to finish all the laps we could run [Sunday] and we almost achieved that, so I'm really pleased," Shiplett said. "I'm really looking forward to the next four races, and getting on a couple of these mile-and-a-halfs to see what our car's got."

GEM, as it sits today and despite wanting to be a four-car team next season, has its three teams for next season established, with veterans Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler and newcomer Sorenson -- who'll drive the No. 10 next season.

But Shiplett said if it were up to him, he'd want to have a seat for Allmendinger. It's ironic that Allmendinger far out-paced his teammates, who finished 33rd (Kahne) and 41st (Sadler) after mechanical failure on Kahne's car and Sadler's getting taken out by rookie Aric Almirola.

"If I was an owner out there that was looking for a driver, I'd seriously be looking hard at him," Shiplett said. "Martinsville is a really technical racetrack and you've really got to know the car and what it's capable of doing and he did an excellent job [Sunday]."