Johnson has momentum, good track record at M'ville

Standing inside the track, looking out on the corners of Martinsville Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway, one would think these two tracks have very little in common. The high-banked, concrete track drivers' faced last week allowed them to race side by side as cars in the upper groove managed to keep pace with those on the bottom.

Side-by-side racing will be more difficult this week, but the two tracks have at least one thing in common: drivers never will be clear of traffic. With NASCAR's double-file lineup, even restarts are 95 mph traffic jams.

Martinsville

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At both Martinsville and Bristol, drivers have to be aggressive in traffic or they run the risk of being lapped. Get too aggressive, however, and they could end up like Mark Martin last week with a wrecked car that once was capable of winning.

Progressive banking may have deprived fans of the bump-and-run at Bristol, but with evenly prepared cars, it is sometimes the only way to pass at Martinsville -- as Denny Hamlin found out in this race last year.

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To watch Jimmie Johnson celebrate last week at Bristol, one would have thought it was his first career victory. Instead, it was his 50th -- tying him for 10th on the all-time list with Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson. That also was his third win in the first five races of the season and his seventh in the past 14 events dating to fall 2009 at Dover. No one has more momentum on his side than the defending four-time champion, and earning his first victory at Bristol may well have been the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place. Martinsville has never been a mystery to Johnson, however. Except for a failure to finish in his first attempt in '02, he's swept the top 10 on this track, has won six times and has not finished worse than fourth in his past nine attempts.

Teammate Jeff Gordon has been nearly as strong at Martinsville. He has seven victories and 22 top-fives in 34 attempts and nearly half of those have come since 2003. He enters the weekend with 10 consecutive top-fives and 14 consecutive top-10s, making this one track where he is virtually guaranteed to anchor most fantasy players' rosters. There are weeks in which you want to play contrary to your opponents, but Hendrick Motorsports' domination of Martinsville means this is not one of those.

Hamlin has yet to earn a top-15 this season, but that will change after this week. Since fall '06 -- a span of seven races -- the only driver other than Johnson to win a Cup race at Martinsville is the Virginia native Hamlin. He cut his teeth on this track and it shows with eight top-10s in nine career starts. With time, he's only gotten better and he enters the weekend with four consecutive top-fives. Two of those were victories in spring '08 and this past fall. In this race last year, he finished second to Johnson after the No. 48 rooted him out of the bottom groove late in the race. Rest assured that he wants to even the score. (Continued)