After two years, Martin returns to different Bristol

For Mark Martin, the challenges continue. After having his last three races ruined by a pair of failed engines and a wreck caused by a cut tire, the veteran driver now faces another obstacle -- an ornery short track he hasn't raced on in more than two years.

Why worry?

Crew chief Alan Gustafson is still all smiles. No, Mark Martin's start hasn't gone the way he planned. But he's still confident.

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And a lot has changed at Bristol Motor Speedway since Martin's last Cup start there, a 28th-place finish for owner Jack Roush in August of 2006. In 2007, the track put down a new concrete surface, which in tandem with the new Sprint Cup car, has facilitated more side-by-side racing and not made it as necessary to bump people out of the way to get by. The high banks and the arena-like atmosphere are the same, but the race track Martin will compete on Sunday is very different from the one he last raced on 31 months ago.

Just what a guy who's 34th in the standings -- and perhaps more importantly, 35th in owners' points -- needs, right? But Martin doesn't seem too concerned. He did take part in a Sprint Cup test on the new concrete, and finished third for the Wood Brothers in a Truck Series event at Bristol last year.

"I don't mean to be overly confident, but it's just a race track," said Martin, who passed on the Tennessee facility during his days running part-time schedules for Ginn Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc. "I'm not concerned at all about neither having raced a [new car] there or not having a ton of experience. It's just a race track. I don't think it will be any problem for us."

While Martin doesn't have any recent experience on the new Bristol, crew chief Alan Gustafson does. Along with former driver Kyle Busch, Gustafson won the 2007 spring event on the short track, the debut event of the current Sprint Cup chassis. That day also marked the last time that Hendrick Motorsports' No. 5 car reached Victory Lane.

"He has a really good understanding of what we need for setup stuff, and he's been on the money everywhere else," Martin said of Gustafson. "It's just another track to us. I'm certainly not concerned. Everywhere I've ever raced, I went there for the first time sometime. This is not like my first time there anyway."

No, that would have been back in 1982, when a 23-year-old Martin drove a No. 02 Apache Stove Pontiac for car owner Bud Reeder. Now he's 50, with 40 career Bristol starts to his name, and he's finished inside the top 10 there more than half the time. He has two wins on the short track, although the last one came more than a decade ago. (Continued)