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.

There are no visions of victory this time, not after what's happened the last three weeks. Martin's alliance with the powerful Hendrick team was supposed to result in one last run for the premier-level championship that's always eluded him. Instead he's been snake bitten by equipment failure, completing just 768 of the 1017 laps contested this year, and forced to put any Chase aspirations on indefinite hold.

No question, Martin still has plenty of time to make up the 189 points that currently separate him from a postseason berth. That's 99 points less than the gap Alan Kulwicki made up to win the 1992 crown, and 33 points more than the deficit Jimmie Johnson came back from en route to his 2006 title. Still, two DNFs and an average finish of 31.8 are not exactly what the No. 5 team had in mind when Martin came on board.

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"The main goal is just keeping the guys positive and focused, including Mark," Gustafson said. "Things have definitely not gone the way we envisioned this year, but we can't afford to lose any of our intensity or our drive. We don't have the time to sit back and feel sorry for ourselves. What's done is done. If we keep working hard and pushing towards that first win, things will go our way. The best personal way I can lead and motivate this team is by example, so that's what I'm focusing on in the upcoming weeks."

In that light, the objective at Bristol is a simple one. "The first goal is to finish a race, the complete distance, on the lead lap," Martin said. "That's the first one, no matter where we finish. Instead of trying to shoot the lights out, we really just need to complete the distance and continue to build our communications with Alan. Hopefully we'll start getting consistent finishes and results."

That mission takes on a little more urgency this week. The Sprint Cup Series begins using 2009 season points next week at Martinsville Speedway, and right now Martin sits directly on the cutoff line separating those who will have guaranteed starting berths and those who will have to get in on speed.

"The main goal is to get back up on our feet," Gustafson said. "I feel that we've been kicked down a lot in the beginning of this season, and we have to turn that around. We need to have solid finishes. Well, first we need to finish. Nothing we're doing -- as far as setup, speed, pit stops -- has been wrong. We've been doing everything right. We just haven't finished a race due to the two engines and the tire at Atlanta. So it's hard to say that we need to change what we're doing, because I don't believe that's the truth. We just need to start getting the finishes we deserve."