While Martin has become the veteran ringleader, other NASCAR veterans have began to make some noise and rematerialize as potential race winners, in particular, Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte.
Burton, 38, has consistently been the most potent of the three Richard Childress Racing drivers, even though his position in the Nextel Cup standings may reveal otherwise. After winning the pole for the Daytona 500, Burton has followed up with exceptional performances, which include a fifth place finish at California and a seventh place finish at Las Vegas. At Atlanta, Burton had a solid top five car until he was forced to pit under green flag conditions, which relegated him to a twenty-fifth place finish.
He was involved in accidents, none his fault, at both Bristol and Martinsville, which has plummeted him to 21st spot in the Nextel Cup standings. But anyone who has paid close attention to NASCAR in 2006 knows that Jeff Burton is back! With a little bit of good luck, Burton will begin to finish where he runs, which has recently been in the top five and top ten.
Heck, even his qualifying results have been impressive. For those of you new-school fans, when Burton was winning races back in the late 1990's, he was known to race his way from the back of the field, sometimes from provisional land. But in 2006, his average starting spot is 9.3.
A casual NASCAR fan may glance at Bobby Labonte's 2006 finishing chart and be completely unimpressed, but many Labonte and Petty fans may disagree. After Labonte made a questionable career altering decision to join Petty Enterprises, not much was expected out of the forty-one year-old driver. But that goes to show you how soon people forget that between Bobby Labonte and the Petty's, they have a combined total of eleven championships, and 283 wins, not to mention the addition of championship crew chiefs Robbie Loomis and Todd Parrott.
Labonte and the #43 team made quite an impression during SpeedWeeks at Daytona as they were among the fastest cars. At California and Las Vegas, Labonte struggled, but once the NASCAR tour hit the track at Atlanta, he began to look like the same guy who won the 2000 championship. Labonte qualified fourth and grabbed the lead early, but after he reeled of thirteen laps as the leader, his engine perished. A week later at Bristol, Labonte would finish fifth, his best finish since last May at Charlotte when he finished second to Jimmie Johnson. At Martinsville, Labonte indisputably had a top ten car, but a broken transmission ended any prospect of an adequate finish. And now, as we head to Labonte's home state of Texas, he sits in the crucial 35th spot in the Nextel Cup standings. But it's his performances, not his results that have given Labonte and Petty Enterprises hopes of returning to victory lane sooner rather than later.
Dale Jarrett, who intends on racing until at least 2008, has been mediocre thus far in 2006. Jarrett, 49, sits 11th in the Nextel Cup standings, and has recorded two top tens, but he hasn't shown that same tendency to run in the top five or ten as Martin, Burton, and Labonte have. Ken Schrader, 50, and Sterling Marlin, 47, has been even less impressive. Both Schrader and Marlin have the equipment to reel off some decent finishes, but they have yet to really click with their new teams.
