Countdown to Daytona: Owner Point Style No. 21 (Mark Martin)

It’s Day 15 of my 35-day trip around the world of NASCAR’s owner points, and we finally may have reached the level where things are certain!

It seems like up to this point, every time I write something, later in the day (or week) it is reported that something else is happening.

Well one thing I know for sure is this, Mark Martin will drive the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in 2009.

And he hopes to finally capture that title that has eluded him all these seasons.

Talk about a guy that’s tired of hearing: “Second is really good, out of 43 cars!”

Martin comes into 2009 with the best equipment he’s ever been in. Well I guess you could argue that he had some awesome cars at Roush Racing, but still, three of the last, oh yeah, three championships, you can’t beat that resume, and Hendrick has that!

Anyway, on to the day’s preview:

Today’s Spotlight: No. 5

Team: Hendrick Motorsports

Driver: Mark Martin

Sponsors: Kelloggs
CARQUEST
Cheez-It

To see various paint schemes, visit Jayski.com.

Driver 2008 Stats: Martin finished 2008 ranked 28th in the points. He did so, however, while only driving in 24 of the 36 races. He managed to earn more than $3.5 million and had 10 top-10 finishes. (For those who don’t like math, that’s roughly 42 percent of the time).

Martin also recorded four top-fives and had an average finish of 13. Could this team have made the Chase if Martin competed in all 36 races? We’ll never know, but he had some strong runs in an otherwise struggling team.

News: There isn’t much news surrounding the No. 5 team this off-season, other than that Kellogg’s will be putting the faces of our favorite driver’s on Pop Tarts this season. (Read Kelly’s story for more info.) So let’s be honest, when the biggest news out of your camp is that you’ll be featured on a Pop Tart, that’s pretty good.

The only other news out of Hendrick Motorsports involved Brad Keselowski running seven Cup races in 2009 and HMS suing DEI over an engine leasing agreement that Ginn Racing had broken when they were acquired by DEI, but not much information has come out of that thus far.

My Prediction for 2009: How does Martin spell success in 2009? C-h-a-m-p-i-o-n-s-h-i-p. OK, let’s be realistic, Martin will not win the championship this season. Coming into a new team, there is just now way he can mesh that quickly and be the No. 1 guy at the end of the year, not to mention he has to race against three-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson.

Martin will make the Chase, however. You can mark that one down in your book now. He proved to be competitive and even led the points in 2007 in a sub-par DEI team, so it’ll be exciting for Martin’s fans to see what he does in a Hendrick Chevy.

I predict he will finish somewhere in the neighborhood of third through sixth.

Will this team remain in top-35: Yes—that’s all I have to say.

Up Tomorrow: No. 83 Brian Vickers

This story also appears on my blog: Sports 101

Reminder: Only 21 days until the Budweiser Shootout!

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