Johnson, Martin dominate all on-track activity at LMS

CONCORD, N.C. -- From Thursday's largely inconsequential one-hour opening practice through Friday night's Happy Hour, Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin have dominated at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet and Martin's No. 5 version have sat, in that order, atop each of the four on-track sessions leading up to Saturday night's NASCAR Banking 500.

But according to many of their chief competitors, that fact isn't the last word when it comes to naming who'll be in Victory Lane.

Steve Hmiel, manager of competition for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, whose driver Juan Montoya is the only competitor to have scored top-five finishes in all four Chase races, gestured up and down the row of Chase cars that were grouped together in the garage as he said "we'll be all right." He referenced Montoya's No. 42 Chevrolet, which was 11th and 25th in Friday's two practices.

"It's really difficult to tell because all of these cars are so good," Hmiel said, "that after five laps, they basically run the same speed, so you've got to look over long ranges. Obviously, we think the 48 and the 5 are good and we're right there amongst them, and then there are a bunch of cars behind us that think they're amongst us."

It was a fact. Kyle Busch, who has four consecutive top-six finishes here and was fifth on the Happy Hour sheet, tied Martin for the best average lap time, 29.80 seconds, as they ran 45 and 44 laps, respectively.

Johnson's average lap in 48 laps was 29.82 seconds while Denny Hamlin, who was third in Happy Hour, averaged 29.83 in 54 laps.

"So it's difficult to tell, but we think we're in good shape," Hmiel said. "We've got a little farther to go [at the start] than we've been having to go here, lately because we didn't qualify as well as we might. But that's not gonna get us down and we'll be in there digging [Saturday] night." (Continued)