Mark Martin Wins Pole at Richmond

RICHMOND, Va. -- Fifty-year old Mark Martin continues to make a strong case for his emotional NASCAR championship run, winning the pole position for Saturday night's Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

It's Martin's sixth pole of the year, tying him with Brian Vickers for the most in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series. His four wins is also tied for most of the season -- a victory total that equals his wins from 2000-2008 combined.

"This year, I've been getting some nice laps,'' Martin said in the ultimate understatement.

Martin Truex Jr. will be joining Martin on the front row, with Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne rounding out the top-five.

Kahne was the best qualifier of the nine other drivers still trying to clinch one of the final eight points in the Chase for the Championship. The other contenders include Brian Vickers (sixth), Kyle Busch (eighth), Carl Edwards (10th), Kurt Busch (13th), Juan Pablo Montoya (14th), Ryan Newman (21st), Greg Biffle (24th), and Matt Kenseth (28th).

Martin, who returned to full-time competition this season after racing part-time the last two seasons, has been one of the feel-good stories of the year. He's had four top-five finishes in the last seven races driving the Hendrick Motorsports Kelloggs-sponsored No. 5 Chevy and positioned himself to be a factor in the 12-driver Chase for the Championship.

He needs to finish 12th or better, however, to secure a spot in the playoffs and continue what he considers a storybook season. His average finish in 48 previous starts at the three-quarter mile Richmond track is 11.9.

"This is beyond my wildest dreams,'' Martin said. "I had hoped we might win a race and I hoped I would drive a fast race car and have great camaraderie with teammates.

"I tend to try to not shoot so high so that I don't fall short of my expectations. I might have had higher expectations if i wasn't so afraid of that. That's how I protect myself.

"But this is what it's all about. I'm just living a dream.

"We don't have to make the Chase to save our year. It's been phenomenal."

In Other News ...

Matt Kenseth has taken a very philosophical approach to his tenuous position of 12th place in the points standings. With only a 20-point edge over 13th place Brian Vickers and a 37-point advantage over 14th place Kyle Busch, Kenseth is in a very precarious situation. In fact only 122 points separate 10 drivers vying for the final eight Chase spots.

"We're capable of much better than this,'' Kenseth said this week.

"We all have the same opportunity to gain points, lose points from Daytona all the way until the race is over here Saturday night, so I think whoever the top-12 end up being, those are the guys that should be in there because they're the ones that have enough points to be in the top-12 after the race.''

Kenseth said he doesn't want the in-race updates on his closest competitors either, finding it too distracting to his task at hand.

"I think you've just got to worry about racing your own car -- race as hard as you can all night long and at the end of the night where you finish, if that's good enough, they you're gonna be in.''

* Pat Tryson, crew chief for Kurt Busch's No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, announced Friday he will be leaving the team at the end of the season. He has led Busch to four wins since joining the team in the summer of 2007. There's no word who will replace Tryson at the Penske operation.

"It's unfortunate that Pat made that type of decision,'' Busch said solemnly Friday afternoon. "It seems like our focus should be on the Chase and making it in the Chase, so it's a tough week for that type of news.

"The timing isn't all that good, but it never is any good when you want to change directions in life. There's never a really good time to bring things up, but I can't be disappointed in Pat or upset at Pat.

"The way that we've had a great run together and the way that he turned our program around in 2007, it helped put him back on the map too, so to speak.''

Rumors have Tryson heading to the same position for driver Martin Truex Jr., who will compete for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010. But Truex deferred when asked about it following qualifying.

* A week later, Denny Hamlin can laugh about his brush with crime a little bit. Authorities have made arrests after thieves stole Hamlin's Lexus right out of his driveway. Video surveillance of Hamlin's Lake Norman home showed the entire crime taking place. And Hamlin said Friday that authorities believe it is the same group of thieves that stole a car from his team owner and neighbor Joe Gibbs several years ago.

"I guess he's stolen about 30 cars in his life which you've got to wonder why he keeps getting out (of jail),'' Hamlin said. "I guess he stole Joe's car out of his garage six or eight years ago.... I don't know. It seems like you would at least go out of town or something instead of just riding around Charlotte. Everyone knows it's my car.

"Eventually, once they played it on the the news, they caught him the next day. Idiots."