A.J. Allmendinger leading 143 of the first 171 laps a couple weeks ago at Dover was just the latest chapter in a rapidly-unfolding saga that's maybe the most intriguing -- and darn sure the most enjoyable -- currently underway in the Sprint Cup Series.

Allmendinger's having fun, and running out front is only part of that. Just about everything in life is treating the diminutive Californian well, and that leads to nothing but smiles.

“

It's not just like you're a part of [Ford] and 'yeah, you drive our cars.' They let me do cool things and they want me as part of the company.

”

-- A.J. ALLMENDINGER

It's a smile that could certainly light-up a dank day in the boondocks.

Slinging a slimy-green, 120-horsepower Ford Fiesta across a gravelly track far-from-anywhere in the New Hampshire north woods might be the only thing leaving Allmendinger nonplussed these days.

Front-wheel-drive on a loose gravel surface might do that, as Allmendinger found out on a recent excursion to the Tim O'Neil Rally School in Dalton, N.H. But it didn't keep him from smiling as he whipped the little Ford -- the little cousin of the 650-HP monster rally car -- from side-to-side punctuated by bursts of laughter from him and his passenger alike.

Because it seems like, only 109 races after his Cup Series debut, Allmendinger has got just about everything figured out. Take Dover, where the 143 laps he led were 100 more than he'd led in the 107 races before that.

But even if he hasn't quite got there -- and trust me, his performance at the Monster Mile only showed he doesn't have much more to learn before he kicks open the gate to Victory Lane -- Allmendinger's day is coming very soon.

Could it be this weekend, in the season's last trip to his home state of California? Allmendinger's started to become a fixture at the front of Cup fields. And the best part of that has to be just how much more he's enjoying life around the NASCAR garages.

"For me, it's been a fun year," Allmendinger said. "It's that combo of still wanting to run better. I look at, in the race car we've ran better than I think our points seem, because we've had a ton of top-15s and there are five races that have really killed us: both Daytonas, Martinsville I got wrecked, Darlington the brakes failed, and another place I got in a wreck.

"So I look at that and figure, without that we could be right there in that 15th-, 16th-place range, which for a first-year team would be pretty good when it comes to working together. But we've still got [seven] races to work on it."

Since the start of the Chase, Allmendinger's made good on the promise he made in the New Hampshire woods, when he was 22nd in the standings: to get within sniffing distance of 15th.

And the goal he cited certainly looks reachable, as he's 19th, 109 points out of 16th and 126 from 15th, and riding a crest of four consecutive top-12 finishes, including three top-10s. (Continued)