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He may have ended the day going backwards, but Kurt Busch did just about everything right to stay up front Sunday.

As a result, Busch earned his first victory of 2009 in the Sprint Cup Series' Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- After what could possibly be described as the most boring day in all of NASCAR -- well, save for the middle laps at Pocono -- a pair of Martins had the hot hand during Sunday's qualifying for next Sunday's Daytona 500.

Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Martin Truex Jr. will lead the Sprint Cup season-opener when the green flag waves, while the revitalized Mark Martin from the Hendrick Motorsports stable will start alongside. Truex's pole-winning speed of 188.001 mph just bested Martin's lap of 187.817 mph to earn the New Jersey driver just his second career pole.

Warning: Objects in this post may be the only way to successfully live through the NASCAR off-season. For best results, read rearview mirror early and often.

Driver: Martin Truex Jr.
Team: No. 1 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet
'08 Final Standing: 15th (-2845)
Best Race: New Hampshire (4th-place)
Worst Race: Kansas & Phoenix (43rd-place)

Season in a box: After picking up his first career win in 2007, most people would have guessed that Martin Truex Jr. -- DEI's new top driver after the departure of Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- would have been a solid competitor in 2008. Instead, 2008 turned into a season of turmoil, rumor and by the time the 2009 season was starting to take shape, it had left questions as to whether he'd be at DEI in 2009.

Nine months after the 2008 NASCAR season began, we're back to the offseason. With NASCAR's awards banquet on Friday, Dec. 6 (stop by for the live blog!), here's a look at ten of the season's best moments.

The Sprint Cup season hadn't even officially started for 2008, but hot shoe Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Inc.'s Martin Truex Jr. were already spittin' mad after the first race run under the Nationwide Series banner at Daytona International Speedway.

Here's a glance back:

Truex was heated after finishing 11th in the Camping World 300 despite challenging for the lead late in the race. A block by Busch as Truex tried to take second place killed his momentum and opportunity to challenge Tony Stewart for the win.

Busch wound up 2nd.

From the NASCAR Scene: "Kyle drives like a girl," Truex said. "I mean, come on. We're out here racing for fun. We had a hell of a battle. I had a lot of fun racing today with him, and then I had a huge run and he just blocked me.

(for the original entire post, click here)

I would imagine Danica Patrick, statisticians who know men are actually the less talented drivers and females everywhere cringed at the comment, but dang, that was pretty funny.

Chip Ganassi has found a way to make his team not as pathetic as before and Dale Earnhardt Inc. has found a way to keep grasping at being a relevant Sprint Cup Series team.

That method? Join the two programs together to create strange bedfellows, cut costs and hope that a math equation of subpar plus subpar finally equals something good.

Yep, Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates will be teaming up to make a four-car team in 2009.

Two of motorsports' biggest names – Earnhardt and Ganassi – will launch a four-car team beginning in 2009 through the combination of the motorsports operations of Dale Earnhardt, Inc. (DEI) and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Inc. (CGRFS). NASCAR stars Martin Truex Jr. and Juan Pablo Montoya will drive the Nos. 1 and 42 respectively and future star Aric Almirola will be behind the wheel of the No. 8. The driver of the No. 41 will be named in the near future.

For those of you keeping track at home, this combination of forces currently includes 4 cars, 3 drivers and 2.5 sponsorships. Let's hope that changes before 2009.

Additionally, the overriding rumor is that Chevrolet will be the manufacturer for the organization, mainly because it's very likely Dale Earnhardt would rise from his grave to haunt anything bearing his name that doesn't bear a bow tie. Dodge, Ganassi's current partner, is apparently being shoved out.

Let's face it, the kid many in the NASCAR garage have referred to as sliced bread -- here's an explanation of the reference -- hasn't exactly been a great beacon of Sprint Cup championship hope for Joe Gibbs Racing in his first three races.

In other words, 18-year-old Joey Logano is really a real person, and, no, he's not going to single-handedly Kyle Busch-ize the 2009 NASCAR season (and probably doesn't want to after we've seen what happens to Busch when the pressure is on).

Leading up to the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, word was that Martin Truex Jr. was going to re-sign with Dale Earnhardt Inc. for 2009, and potentially longer. Truex, though, wasn't happy about the report done by ESPN.com's David Newton:

"It's (expletive). I don't know what the hell (the reporter) is talking about. He doesn't know what he's talking about," Truex said.

It turns out, though, that Newton was ultimately right. Whether or not he was right at the time, though, is still up in the air.

Regardless, Martin Truex Jr. is expected to announce later Friday that he will be staying at DEI in the No. 1 car for at least one more year. In contract terms, Truex actually just accepted the DEI's proposal to pick up the one-year option for '09 that was already in his previous deal.

Truex's move takes away at least a fraction of the rumor game being currently played throughout the Sprint Cup garage area, as he has been rumored for any number of open seats in 2009 including Stewart-Haas Racing, Penske Racing, and Richard Childress Racing.

Tony Stewart apparently just had to scratch that itch -- you know, that itch that Dale Earnhardt Jr. scratched enough in 2007 to find his way to Hendrick Motorsports.

And now that we know that Tony (or at least we think we know) won't be piloting the No. 20 Toyota in 2009 for Joe Gibbs Racing in favor of owning his own team, we need to look at Stewart the team owner/teammate. In other words, who is going to work best with Stewart as a teammate in 2009?

Let's start with the most-rumored candidate, "Flyin' Ryan" himself:

Ryan Newman - Newman seems to make the most sense for a number of reasons. Newman is a fellow Hoosier like Stewart, has a dirt track and open-wheel background just like Stewart, and he's in the final year of his contract with a struggling Penske. And, oh yeah, dude is fast.

Newman has 43 career poles and 13 wins -- including the 2008 Daytona 500. You put Newman into a fast car, and he can put you in victory lane. He's also got some pretty sweet wrestling moves, too. The only thing he doesn't bring is a sponsor package, though it wouldn't be hard to find one.

Martin Truex Jr. - Truex could be next great defector from the idling ship that is Dale Earnhardt Inc. With one career win coming last summer at Dover, Truex made the Chase for the Championship in 2007 but his chances don't look as good this time around.

After receiving a strong penalty from NASCAR Tuesday afternoon, Martin Truex Jr.'s shot at making the Chase for the Championship for the second time in two years took a deep hit.

It wasn't the 150 owner points that hurt, not the $100,000 fine, or even the loss of his crew chief and car chief for the next six races, instead, it was the 150 driver points that Truex lost thanks to his No. 1 car failing inspection last Thursday at Daytona due to a roof height violation.

As if it wasn't bad enough, NASCAR confiscated that car, forcing Truex to miss practice and race a backup car.

But that 150-point penalty is the killer. The penalty completely wiped all 112 points that Truex earned in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona and then some. In other words, the penalty is worse than if Truex would have missed a race.

The damage dropped Truex 238 points behind 12th-place Tony Stewart, but the biggest difference is that instead of sitting 14th in the point standings, Truex now sits 18th, leaving six drivers ahead of him that are fighting for the same spot.

Truex is now in a very, very tough spot if he wants to make the Chase, having to average at this point a finish 30 points higher each race than Stewart, which translates to between 5 and 11 spots higher in each of the last 8 races before the Chase.

It's a tough penalty, and it deeply affected Truex's run at the championship in the playoff, but its simply another wake up call to teams to be extremely stringent with the way they build their race cars. Is a penalty like that fair? Well, thats a discussion for another day.