HMS drivers find clearing on a cloudy day at M'ville

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Usually when it rains, it pours.

Just ask any struggling race team. They'll be quick to say that bad luck seems to breed more of the same.

But don't ask anyone from Hendrick Motorsports those brooding questions any longer. At least not this week.

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Sunday during the Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville Speedway, four Hendrick drivers and 39 others from the Sprint Cup Series raced for more than three hours and 35 minutes, taking 500 laborious circuits around the .526-mile paperclip in a steady drizzle. Despite gray, ominous clouds that hovered over the competitors and a crowd estimated at 63,000, constantly threatening more mayhem, the heavy downpour never came.

Nor did the bad luck, or mistakes, that had plagued three of the four Hendrick teams much of the season. Or at least the Hendrick drivers -- Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey Mears -- avoided enough of it or were able to overcome whatever adversity came their way to post strong finishes across the board.

Although the race was won by Denny Hamlin in his No. 11 Toyota owned by Joe Gibbs Racing, and kudos were rightly delivered to Hamlin all around, the Hendrick teams that went into the race squirming under a blanket of criticism emerged on the other side bolstered by a renewed sense of optimism.

Race victories usually do that for an organization, and it's true that Hendrick remains strangely winless for the season. But in this case, the next-best scenario was achieved through the group effort that included a second-place finish by Gordon, a hard-earned fourth by Johnson, a sixth by Earnhardt and a seventh by Mears.

"There has been a lot of criticism that I think is unnecessary on Hendrick. I think [Sunday] pretty much proved where we were at," Gordon said Sunday. "You know, we dominated this race. We might not have won it -- and that's what has happened to us at other races, too. We've been really, really the cars to beat and had a great team effort and everything, but we just haven't had the results to show for it. But [Sunday], I thought it was a pretty darn good day."

The points picture

For evidence of the darn good day, Gordon needed only to refer to heavy Hendrick movement upward in the point standings. All four drivers gained spots, with Gordon and two-time defending points champion Johnson finally moving into the top 12 that represents those who will be invited to play in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Results

Goody's Cool Orange 500

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
2.	Jeff Gordon	Chevrolet
3.	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet
4.	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet
5.	Tony Stewart	Toyota
6.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet
7.	Casey Mears	Chevrolet
8.	Jamie McMurray	Ford
9.	Carl Edwards	Ford
10.	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet

• Official Results | Standings
• Lap-by-Lap | Videos | Photos

Until Sunday, Gordon and Johnson had been on the wrong side of the top 12 cutoff. While that hardly seemed cause for serious alarm after only five races, history has shown that there usually is little movement from outside the top 12 to inside it after the first six or seven races.

So the clock was ticking. Another bad day for either or both at Martinsville, and reporters might have begun holding a vigil outside Hendrick Motorsports headquarters in Concord, N.C., determined to get to the bottom of what had happened to the organization that thoroughly dominated the sport only a year ago.

And it wasn't just Gordon and Johnson who took a stand for Hendrick in the rain at Martinsville.

Only Hamlin jumped more spots in the point standings than Mears, who was in danger of falling into the abyss outside of the top 35 in owner points. Mears' seventh-place finish permitted him to vault six places forward in the standings, from 33rd to the much more secure spot of 27th heading into next Sunday's race at Texas.

"We had a rough start to the season and some bad luck," said Mears of his No. 5 Chevrolet team. "The good thing is everybody held their heads up pretty high. We know that we are competitive, and this is a good start for us to rebound and go on from here."

Leading the way

Earnhardt, the only Hendrick driver who had been able to avoid most of the early season trouble dished out to the others (he was victimized in one race), jumped from fifth to fourth in the point standings by virtue of his sixth-place run. He was helped by a five-point bonus for leading the most laps of any racer, a total of 146.

While he admitted afterward that he had designs on breaking a winless streak in points events that now sits at 68 races, dating back to the Richmond race in the spring of 2006, Earnhardt said he blamed himself for running too hard at the start of the last green-flag run and using up too much of his tires, too quickly. But he added that he wouldn't allow himself to be upset.

"We got a good finish. I am really happy about that," he said of his No. 88 Chevrolet team. "We led a lot; we can't be too upset. That would be ridiculous to be disappointed with how we did, because we did really good."

So did Gordon in his No. 24 Chevy, and Johnson in his No. 48 car.

While Junior led five different times for his race-high total of 146 laps, Johnson led five times for a total of 135 and Gordon, the pole-sitter, three times for a total of 90. That meant the three combined to lead 371 of the 500 laps in the event.

None reached Victory Lane, as Johnson did twice at Martinsville last year. But none of the Hendrick boys seemed too distraught that Johnson's streak of wins at the track came to a halt at three.

They preferred instead to focus on a future that they hope will include less critical focus on what has gone wrong for them this season, and more on what they can do going forward to get back to the form that produced wins for Hendrick in more than half the events on the 36-race schedule a year ago. To match that win total this season, they would have to combine to win 18 of the remaining 30 races -- which isn't likely to happen.

Gordon was asked if he found the earlier torrent of criticism a little out of line.

"I think it's a little ridiculous," he said. "But at the same time I understand that, you know, if you compare it to last year and how strong we were and how many races we had won to this point in the season, it was a pretty dominating performance. You're just not going to have every year like that."

That much already was clear even before Sunday's race. But at least now there is a little sun shining down on the Hendrick race shop, pushing the rain clouds aside for the coming week at least and perhaps even for the rest of the season.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.