Catchfence

POINTS LEADER: Mark Martin and the No. 5 team recorded four victories in NASCAR’s regular season — the most of any Chase for the Sprint Cup qualifier — to earn the top spot entering the sport’s version of the playoffs. Martin enters New Hampshire Motor Speedway with a 10-point lead on Tony Stewart and teammate Jimmie Johnson. The last time Martin was the points leader was March 2007.

CHASE MAKER: Following a fourth-place finish last Saturday at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, Martin qualified for the 2009 Chase for the Sprint Cup. This is Martin’s fourth appearance in NASCAR’s Chase. In his previous three, he finished fourth in the standings in 2004 and 2005 and ninth in 2006. Martin has qualified for the Chase in each of his fulltime seasons since the format’s inception.

OLDEST CHASE MEMBER: Martin, 50, is now the oldest driver ever to qualify for the Chase. If he is able to win his first title, he will become the oldest champion in Sprint Cup history.

STARTING POINT: Martin has scored finishes of 13th or better in all three of his Chase kickoff races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. His best start to the Chase — a seventh-place finish — happened in 2005 after he started 15th and led 31 laps.

COMPARABLE CHASE SEASONS: Martin’s average finish in the 26 races leading into the Chase is within three positions for all four seasons. His best average finish — 13.11 — was in 2006 when he went on to finish ninth in the standings. Martin’s four wins and six pole positions in 2009 are his highest for all four Chase pre-seasons, but he earned more top-five finishes (12) and more top-10s (19) prior to the start of the 2005 Chase in which he finished fourth.

LOOP STATS: Out of the 12 Chase drivers, Martin holds the fifth-best average running position — 11.899 — and driver rating — 93.4 — during the last four years at New Hampshire. While NASCAR’s loop statistics include the last nine races run at NHMS, Martin only competed in five of them due to his part-time schedules in 2007 and 2008.

CLOSER: Martin leads the Sprint Cup Series in late-race passes at New Hampshire. Martin has gained 5.6 positions in the last 10 percent of laps during his previous five races there, for a total gain of 28 positions in 148.1 laps.

MARTIN AT NEW HAMPSHIRE: Martin has earned eight top-five finishes — including three runner-up spots — and 13 top-10s at New Hampshire, but he never has visited Victory Lane there. The veteran driver posted his best performance on Aug. 30, 1998, when he started fifth and led 193 laps before finishing second to his now Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon. The two went on to finish first and second in the series final standings that season.

NO. 5 AT NEW HAMPSHIRE: While Martin hasn’t won at New Hampshire, his crew chief Alan Gustafson and the No. 5 team went to Victory Lane on July 16, 2006. In nine total Cup starts at the track, the team has earned one victory, three top-five finishes and four top-10s with Gustafson at the helm.

ONE OF TWO: Gustafson, 34, is one of only two crew chiefs to qualify multiple drivers for the Chase. Gustafson led Kyle Busch through the 2006 and 2007 Chase races. Pat Tryson, current crew chief for 2009 Chase contender Kurt Busch, also qualified Martin in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

BUSY CHASSIS: Gustafson has chosen Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 5-538 for Sunday’s race. This is the same chassis that Martin drove to a fourth-place finish last weekend at Richmond. He also won in 5-538 at Phoenix International Raceway in April.

JOINING THE CLUB: Should Martin win another Sprint Cup race, he will become one of only three full-time drivers to have earned more than 40 victories in NASCAR’s elite series. His Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, are the others.

POLE MAN: Martin has earned six poles this season, tying his career-best mark that he set in 1989. Martin’s 47 career poles tie him with Junior Johnson for ninth on the Sprint Cup all-time list. Martin is the only driver older than 50 to have earned the top starting spot in a Cup event.

NEXT MILESTONE: At Dover (Del.) International Speedway on Sept. 27, Martin will make his 750th career Sprint Cup start. Martin will become only the ninth driver to reach this mark in the series 61-year history. In his 748 Cup starts, he has earned 39 victories, 252 top-five finishes and 410 top-10s. He has driven 274,481.9 miles during his 27-year career. That’s enough distance to take him more than 35,000 miles past the moon.

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MARK MARTIN, DRIVER, NO. 5 CARQUEST/KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET (ON BEING THE POINTS LEADER.): “It’s exciting for sure. The enjoyment I get out of seeing the guys on this team get excited — that’s why I love what I’m doing. And they really, really wanted to make the Chase. But once it was thrown out there that we could be the points leader, I knew they wanted that, too. It’s an accomplishment for sure, and I think it says a lot about this race team. We were 34th in points. And those four wins, at the time, were a huge help just to get us into the Chase. And now they mean so much more. So, while it’s not a huge lead, and I don’t think any of us are getting a big head over it, it’s definitely a nice accomplishment.”

MARTIN (ON THIS WEEKEND’S RACE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.): “We struggled a bit at New Hampshire when we were there earlier this year. The rain-shortened race didn’t help us much either. But I think the team has learned where the cars can be improved. Look, every track that we’ve come back to a second time this year, Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and these guys have brought me a better race car than we had the time before. And I have no doubt that that’s going to continue. I’m looking forward to getting there. I’m looking forward to getting back out on the track.”

MARTIN (ON FAVORED DRIVERS OR TEAMS IN THE CHASE.): “I don’t really think you can pick that out. I mean, the Chase is anyone’s to win and anyone’s to lose. All of these teams got in here because they’re good. And all it takes is a stretch of 10 good races to win this. I think any of these 12 teams could win it.”

ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, NO. 5 CARQUEST/KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET (ON THE NO. 5 TEAM ENTERING THE CHASE AS THE POINTS LEADER.): “The biggest thing for me is that we have a little bit of a head start — not much, but it is a small head start and a little advantage over the competition. So that’s a positive. It’s definitely better than being behind. We put ourselves in the best position we could, and it’s better than anyone else. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not extremely high. Ten points is a small amount now that could be a huge amount later. But for right now we’ll look at it as not much of an advantage. We’ll consider it even and go out and do the best we can.”

GUSTAFSON (ON THE TEAM’S APPROACH THROUGHOUT THE CHASE.): “We want to win every race. If we can’t win, or don’t feel that we are in a position to win, then we’ll race as hard as we can for every spot. Nothing changes as far as our philosophy and preparation. We’re going (to the racetrack) to win. We’ll try to win Loudon, and then Dover, and Kansas, and so on and so forth.”

GUSTAFSON (ON FAVORITES IN THE CHASE.): “Throughout the season we’ve seen that some guys have more strengths than others. I think that the sport is a lot about momentum and there are a lot of teams that have that right now. It’s hard to say that there are any favorites. But you can look at teams and know that they’re going to be tough, maybe more so than others. But you definitely can’t sleep on anybody. If things go the right way for the team that seems to be the weakest, and they get some positive results and positive momentum, they could quickly become the favorite. I respect all the teams that have made it. I think they are all good teams with good drivers. We’re going to look at all of them as our stiffest competition.”

GUSTAFSON (ON NEW HAMPSHIRE MOTOR SPEEDWAY.): “I think that this is a very important race. It may be, if not the, one of the most important races of the Chase for us particularly. It’s a track that we were OK at in the spring, but we need to be considerably better. It’s going to be a tough race. Track position is a big deal. Restarts are tough there now. Being up front is a big premium. It’s a very important race for us, and right now it is the most important.”

- Hendrick Motorsports, Press Release