Martin, Gustafson come up short in Phoenix, 2009(?)

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway was the kind of day that'll make a young crew chief an old man before his time; and in the case of veteran driver Mark Martin, already 50, just make him shrug.

Martin's crew chief, Alan Gustafson, who's on the verge of his best championship finish, let out a hearty laugh when presented with that scenario.

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Mark Martin talks about his fourth-place finish at Phoenix.

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"Well, you know -- there's days it does and then there's days when you realize how fortunate we are to be in the positions we're in," Gustafson said. "And at the end of the day I know all these guys have fought their tails off and put 100 percent into what we've done here and we were just off a little bit and that's all it takes."

A decent day and a fourth-place finish weren't enough when Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson won and led the most laps. Martin and Gustafson came into the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500, the penultimate race of the sixth annual Chase, trailing Johnson by 73 points.

Going to next weekend's Ford 400 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Martin unofficially trails Johnson, who's trying to win a record fourth consecutive championship, by 108 points.

Johnson acknowledged there's the possibility he could lose. A NASCAR statistician pointed out that nine times in their head-to-head career of 266 races Martin's made up 108 points or more on Johnson in a race -- including last weekend at Texas and in 2005 at Homestead, where Johnson finished fifth in the Chase to Martin's fourth.

The following year Johnson won the first of three consecutive titles.

"That's a great position to be in," Johnson said of his advantage, with a qualifier. "We finished 38th last week so I can't put my guard down. Anything and everything that could go wrong last week did. Going into this next week we just need to show up and race smart and do our thing." (Continued)