No prediction for Martin, but he's ready for Pocono

Mark Martin was tight-lipped about his prospects for Sunday's Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 -- even before all of Saturday's practice was rained-out -- but five months before he's scheduled to join Hendrick Motorsports, he didn't have a problem predicting the organization's future.

Martin, who qualified his No. 8 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet second next to future Hendrick teammate Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet on Friday, said he was looking forward to mentoring Brad Keselowski and Landon Cassill at Hendrick.

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I feel like the mix is perfect right now for me. ... I feel 100 percent rejuvenated.
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MARK MARTINBut first, he wants to win a race for DEI and then take a shot at the 2009 Sprint Cup championship.

He thinks the former can happen Sunday, for a few reasons. First, he's been runner-up six times at Pocono. He qualified third and finished 10th in the Pocono 500 a month ago -- which caused a bold and uncharacteristic prediction of a victory in last weekend's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Finally, he's got the same Impala SS he ran a month ago on the triangular 2.5-mile track, but slightly tuned-up, and that's what has him optimistic despite being faced with a basically green racetrack on Sunday.

"I feel real good," Martin said. "Tony Gibson [crew chief] and I talked about things after the race [in June], with our notes and what we'd like to try this time to make the car better.

"We need to make the car a little better, so we just went over those notes and incorporated those changes that we were going to try and we'll make adjustments. I would have to think we're way ahead of 50 percent of the field."

Much as was the case a week ago, Sunday at Pocono Martin said he'd only have to look sideways to catch the fields' biggest threat.

"We weren't good enough to beat [Johnson at Indy]," Martin said. "Now, there is a lot of ways to win these races. You can be the fastest car out there or you can be one of the group behind the fastest car and still win.

"For me to have won [at Indy] I would have had to have things really go my way because [Johnson] had the fastest car. Sixty percent or 65 percent of the time, the fastest car wins. The other 35-40 percent of the time, someone else is able to pull it off. But our car was clearly better than 11th [at Indy]."

Martin hopes to improve his Pocono 10th-place from June, on Sunday.

"We need to make it better than it was in race setup last time here," Martin said. "We improved the qualifying setup a little bit. So if we can find some things that will make the car stay strong longer into the run than it did last time, then we can be a contender.

"It is just really tough to beat [Johnson] right now. Like I said, we will do everything we can to have the fastest, best car and have all the best decisions and then we have to rely on what, fate, or whatever. We have to rely on some other things to line up for us."