New Hampshire news and notes

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series returns to New Hampshire this weekend, and while the strained relationship between Bruton Smith and the police chief in charge of security for the speedway made for an interesting few comments at Kentucky Speedway two weeks ago, a more interesting story is the driver of the GoDaddy.com car.

No, not Danica Patrick, but 51-year-old Mark Martin.

In September of last year Martin started off the Chase by taking his first career victory at New Hampshire. He’s still winless at Daytona, Indianapolis and Homestead, but to get his first win at what he considered one of his “worst tracks” was a great feat.

“This is my hardest place, a tough place,” he said after winning that day. It was a thrilling finish with Martin and Juan Pablo Montoya dueling to the finish.

“Starting the Chase off like that, that was just incredible. I’d never won at New Hampshire before,” he said earlier this week. “Alan [Gustafson] gave me an amazing race car, and then he made a great pit call to get us to the front.”

But this year has been a lot tougher on the eldest Hendrick Motorsports member. Even though he’d be in the Chase if it started today, he doesn’t have any wins. Last year at this time he had three victories and seemed to be on top of the world.

“We’ve cycled around to not being on the top of the heap – we were nearly on the top of the heap a year ago – from a competition side. But we were new together, and we weren’t necessarily executing every single race quite as well as we are today,” Martin told Jay Hart of Yahoo.com. “We’ve made gains in some areas and we’ve got some work to do in some others.”

Within a few weeks Rick Hendrick should announce plans for the 2011 season involving his newest driver Kasey Kahne. Kahne isn’t supposed to take over the No. 5 car from Martin until 2012, but some speculations have Kahne in the No. 5 car next year.

Hart asked Martin, “OK, let’s just get this one out of the way: Is there even a 1 percent chance you won’t be in the 5 car next season?”

“As of today?” he responded. “No.”

And until Rick Hendrick makes the final call, which should come within a month, everyone is left to speculate.

Martin, though, remains humble. “I’m just a regular guy that does something that they think is a big deal, but I’m not a big deal. I’m just a regular guy,” he said.

He’s a regular guy returning to the last place he was more than regular. Tune in on Sunday to see if history repeats itself at New Hampshire.