Earnhardt, Martin put together solid finishes

MARTINSVILLE — As winner Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon ran in the lead pack for most of the afternoon, their Hendrick Motorsports teammates quietly put together a solid race behind them. Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who both got off to rocky starts this season, finished seventh and eighth, respectively, on Sunday in the Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

Had Martin and Earnhardt not gotten caught up in lapped traffic on multiple restarts late in the race, they may have finished even higher.

“We weren’t able to finish where we should have,” Earnhardt said. “We were a top-5 car most of the day, I thought.”

For both Earnhardt and Martin, their good results were surely welcomed. Martin’s top 10 was his second in a row, but his season was marred early by three finishes of 27th or worse. Two of those were the result of engine trouble. When his car hasn’t failed him, he’s run well and he has qualified in the top 10 four times in the first five races.

“Mark’s had a heck of a year,” team owner Rick Hendrick said. “You take where he’s run and where he’s qualified and without the failures that were our fault, he’d probably be in the top three or four in points.”

Because Friday’s qualifying was rained out, Sunday’s lineup was set by the points standings. That certainly didn’t benefit Martin, who started 31st. The veteran, who hadn’t raced at Martinsville since 2006, barely cracked the top 30 until the scheduled competition yellow flag around lap 40. It was then that Martin elected not to get four new tires. The move catapulted Martin from 29th entering the pits to 10th when he exited.

Martin hovered around the tail end of the top 10 all afternoon and maneuvered up to sixth before getting passed by Ryan Newman on the final lap. Still, Martin’s performance Sunday moved him from 31st in the points up to 27th.

Martin finished just ahead of Earnhardt, who battled back from early transmission trouble to notch his first top 10 of 2009.

Earnhardt was as far back as 42nd at one point, but he worked his way up to as high as third on a restart on lap 265.

“Our transmission wouldn’t stay in gear,” Earnhardt said. “We got a bungee cord and it held it in gear the rest of the day, so no problems.”

Earnhardt, on the other hand, has struggled to find his groove, which led to a team meeting earlier this week to discuss ways to improve. Although Martinsville marked his best finish of the season, Earnhardt was still unhappy.

“We didn’t have as good a car as I wanted to have,” said Earnhardt, who improved from 19th to 16th in points. “But we worked on it all day and the guys stayed positive.”

For Hendrick, that’s all he wanted to see.

“The 88 team and Dale have worked hard,” Hendrick said. “We’ve had a lot of effort behind that and I think it showed today.”