Payback coming and a line drawn

Wow, what Bristol lacked, Martinsville provided Sunday. But if you only walked away talking about the Jimmie Johnson-Denny Hamlin duel, you missed out on a few key things, including a former champion challenging his team.

First, let's get to the Hamlin-Johnson duel.

Johnson said Hamlin squeezed him when he dived under Hamlin with 16 laps to go and they hit, sending both up the track. Hamlin said Johnson hit him. Doesn't matter. It's history. What was interesting was how cool and calm Hamlin was afterweard although one had to surmise he was seething inside.

That said, he rather coolly proclaimed that what happened Sunday isn't finished.

"If the roles were reversed, I'd do the same thing,'' Hamlin said. "Believe me, I will if it ever comes back around.''

There you go, Hamlin says without emotion that this is business and business will be taken care of when he gets the chance. Hamlin later noted that while three short track races remain before the series gets back to Martinsville in the fall, that this race in October might be his best chance to get revenge against Johnson and it would come in a Chase race. Hmmm.

"Hopefully,'' Hamlin said of a payback at this race in the fall, "it will pay bigger dividendts than it does now.''

Wouldn't that be something?

Johnson claimed his innocence: "If he wants to think I tried moving him out of the way, he can believe that, but he should watch the video and realize I was inside of him and I did everything I could to miss.''

Doubt that will work. Hamlin led 296 or 500 laps and seemed set to snap a year-long winless drought _ his last win came in this race a year ago. Instead, it was Johnson celebrating  his fifth win in the last six Martinsville races and his sixth Martinsville win overall.

Rarely do things live up the hype but it would be something to see these two battle it out back here in the fall.

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The champion who called out his team? Jeff Gordon.

Yes, Gordon finished fourth and maintains the points lead. Yes, this wasn't like a callilng out that, say Kyle Busch might do to his crew, but, no doubt, Jeff had a point to get across and he did. Here's what he said after the race:

"It is great to run in the top-five but if we are going to contend for the championship, espeically in those final 10 races, we've got to start winning races. I am not really concerned with this streak of how many (races) we haven't had in a row (career-long 47). I am more concerned with what we have to do this year to win races and win this championship. You certainly don't want to give that No. 48 (Johnson) momentum. I know that we are capable of winning. We have a team capable of it. I thought we were going to do a lot better than we were today.''

Yes, it's still early, but Gordon knows those bonus points can be critical in the Chase. He's already 10 down on Johnson as of now. Plus, the series heads to Texas, one of the few tracks Gordon does not consistently run well. He knows he needs to start capitalizing on some tracks and get wins and bonus points. Plus, Jeff has often said that a win early in the season takes the heat off a team on when are they going to win. If he doesn't have a win before May ends, which seems highly doubtful, it will be interesting to see how he andhis team react in the summer. But that's down the road. Let's see what happens in the next few weeks.

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Odds and ends

# Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 8th -- his fourth consecutive top-14 finish. That said, he wasn't thrilled. He said he had a top-five car most of the day and adjustments at the end of the day didn't help him. "Kind of unfortunate,not real happy about that finish.'' Still, he moved up to 16th in the points and is 44 points behind Matt Kenseth for 12th in the standings.

# Stewart-Hass Racing placed both its cars in the top 10 for the first time this year. Tony Stewart was third with Ryan Newman sixth.

# Jimmie Johnson has 41 career wins in 261 starts. That's a winning percentage of 15.7 percent, an impressive total in this sport.

# Robby Gordon finished 40th. This is the 8th consecutive time he's finished 34th or worse at Martinsville.

# Would you look at AJ Allmendinger? Man, he' s doing everything to keep his ride. It could make things interesting at Richard Petty Motorsports if he continues to do well. It doesn't seem likely the team can afford to run him all year if it doesn't have sponsorship in place, yet he's 15th in points (second-highest RPM driver in the points with Kasey Kahne 9th). Antoher great run Sunday, finishing 9th.

# All four of Rick Hendrick's cars placed in the top 10 with Jimmie Johnson first, Jeff Gordon fourth, Mark Martin sevneth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. eighth.

# Clint Bowyer finished fifth, his best finish ever at Martinsville.

# Kyle Busch was awful. In the first 250 laps, he wrecked rookie Scott Speed when he spun running underneath Speed (who gave Busch plenty of room), was called for going too fast exiting pit road and blew a tire. He did apologize over the radio to Speed for wrecking him. Busch finished 24th and fell two spots to sixth in the points.

# Carl Edwards, who said one of his three main goals this year is to win at Martinsville, finished 26th. He was running well until contact led to a tire going down and he had to pit under green and lost two laps. He never recovered.

So, what did you think of Sunday's race? Of Hamlin-Johnson? Or anything else?

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