So much for omens. By day’s end, she was carrying the banner for Stewart-Haas Racing, outdistancing teammate Ryan Newman, last year’s race winner who came home 31st, and her boss, three-time Martinsville winner Tony Stewart, who was 17th.

It was quite the turnabout for Patrick, who failed to dazzle during practice or qualifying Friday and Saturday. Worse, she traded her 32nd-place starting position for the absolute rear of the field after she over-revved her engine in practice, prompting crew chief Tony Gibson and her SHR team to change powerplants before Sunday’s race.

Starting last and falling down two laps early seemed to be the recipe for disaster for Patrick at NASCAR’s shortest track, which has a reputation for humbling rookie drivers. But things were already starting to click, even if it didn’t appear that way on the scoreboard.

"Honestly I felt pretty comfortable from the get-go," Patrick said. "When you have a decent car, things just are a lot easier. I’ve had a lot of other worse weekends, like Fontana, I’ve been there a bunch of times, but it was misery until the race. It was just a good car, so we were steady all weekend and we just kind of kept improving. We also improved in the race, which is always really important. We ended up getting really good power down by about halfway through the race and no matter what I did, I could really get on it well coming off the corner."

Just as instrumental in the team’s major comeback was the savvy of Gibson, who helped Patrick keep her composure for the balance of the race despite the quick spin. He also twice made the right call with the wave-around rule to get his driver back on the lead lap, where she stayed until the finish.

"She was really down on herself (early)," Gibson said. "She got bumped and got spun … but I told her there was a long way to go and there would be plenty of opportunities to get those laps back. Just have to be patient and be smooth and she did it. She kept her head all day; only got fired up a couple of times, and I had to rein her back in and keep her calm."

Once on the lead lap, she was on the march. Patrick was in the middle of a three-wide sandwich with Brian Vickers and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 26th in his Martinsville debut in 2000, with 35 laps remaining, but kept her car pointed in the right direction. She even picked off Stewart in the final 50 laps on her way toward the fringes of the top 10, which only underscored how her familiarity with the tricky .526-mile layout grew as the day progressed.

"I feel like finding the limit on a short track where you’re going a little slower is a little bit … there’s a little less penalty there, a little less risk than finding the limit on a really big track where you’re doing 200 miles an hour and you get sideways and you don’t always catch those," Patrick said. "I guess that’s probably the comfort level for me. I felt like it was kind of traditional passing here, setting it up and getting your nose in there, a little bit more road-course style, so that might have some effect because I’ve done so much of that. But good car, steady day."

After watching his driver defy rookie expectations, Gibson agreed, only more emphatically.

"She did a fantastic job," Gibson said. "We achieved way more than we thought we would do coming into here. … She should be proud of herself."
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"I didn’t know him personally, just knew him as a racer," said Martin, who will return to Michael Waltrip Racing next weekend after the one-race stint for JGR. "I’m really impressed with how engaged he is. That’s why I’m convinced 100 percent that when he gets back in the race car, he will be a better driver than he ever has been before. He’s going to see things and learn things. He wants to — he’s here instead of sitting at home."

But if Hamlin learned from the experience, so did Martin, even though he has 22 years and 596 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts on his weekend counterpart. What Hamlin does have is a sixth sense for navigating Martinsville, where he’s won four times, making the job of offering pointers to the 54-year-old veteran that much easier.

"He’s obviously a guy that’s been around longer than anyone that’s driving these cars, but wants to be treated like he’s a rookie," Hamlin said. "He constantly wants to learn, and he’s willing to take in any information you’ll give him. I think that’s why he’s been in the sport as long as he has, is because he’s continued to learn, and he’s still the Mark Martin from the 1990s."

Martin’s day was far from a smooth one. After struggling to adapt to Hamlin’s setup in practice and qualifying Friday and Saturday, Martin started 35th in the 43-car field. He battled to stay on the lead lap early while searching frantically for elusive grip from the front tires, but Hamlin made helpful suggestions on alternate racing grooves to make Martin’s car handle.

With Hamlin’s advice on file, Martin methodically moved up before a botched pit stop slowed his progress near the midway point of the 500-lapper. Martin stopped for service on Lap 254 during the sixth of 12 caution periods in the race, but the left-front tire was improperly mounted when he tried to leave his pit stall. His crew fixed the issue, but did so outside the designated pit box, drawing a penalty and sending him to the back of the field for the restart.

From there, it was a matter of survival to work back toward the top 10.

"This is one day I could’ve used six or seven hundred laps," Martin said of his late charge. "We had a pretty good race car, probably not a winner, but a top-10 car because we got there after all the struggles. … Everybody did a great job. I would’ve liked to deliver a better result for them, but we fought some issues and had a good day. We worked as a team well today."

There were few team players bigger on the No. 11 crew than Hamlin, who was at the track as a consultant all three days at Martinsville and sat atop the team’s pit box for Sunday’s main event. He plans on doing the same next weekend at Texas, but says he’ll take care not to overdo it as his back heals from his March 24 crash at Auto Club Speedway.

"I planned on going to all the races," Hamlin said. "I didn’t realize the physical toll that being up and being at the track three days in a row would have, so I may try to limit my time going forward to just a couple of days. But I want to do whatever it takes to get back in the car as soon as possible, and really, rest is the only thing that can really do that."

Until then, the waiting — and watching his car being driven by someone else — might be the hardest part.

"I thought I was over it during practice and everything, but really, the start of the race and all that part, that hurt the most," Hamlin said. "Now hopefully it won’t be as bad the second, third, fourth race into it, so I’ll just do everything I can to get back."
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