Mark Martin back fulltime in 2010, TV talk and more

Hendrick Motorsports just announced that Mark Martin will return to drive the No. 5 for the entire season next year. Martin signed a two-year deal with Hendrick last July. He was to have run the full season this year and then run 26 races in 2010.

The move isn't surprising. Martin has been strong (minus those early season engine failures) and climbing steadily up the points. He also won at Phoenix last month.

The team's sponsorship lineup for next season has not yet been announced.

Of course, this creates the question of what will happen to Brad Keselowski. He was looked upon as the guy who would share the No. 5 ride with Martin next year. Now that Hendrick's four seats are filled -- Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin -- where does Keselowski go?

Logic -- and  that's always a dangerous thing in this sport -- would be to see about Stewart-Haas adding a third car to allow Keselowski to run it. Remember that Stewart-Haas has close ties to Hendrick, getting its chasis, engines and technical support from Hendrick. If the sponsorship could be found, it would make sense that if Hendrick was intent on keeping Keselowski, he put him in a third car at Stewart-Haas and then could move him over to the 5 car after next year as it would be hard to imagine Martin running another full season in 2011.

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TV ratings for Sprint Cup races are down and what it means can be quite confusing. There are several factors for the drop in ratings, down 13 percent from last year before the Richmond race.

A few of the reasons listed by various folks from race fans to those in the sport and those at Fox can be seen in my story here on the ratings that ran the other day.

One reason I couldn't get to in the story was the debate on starting times. I've heard from many fans how the races start too late for those in the Eastern Time Zone.  Let me give you some detail. I got this from a Nielsen official. Here are the percentage of TVs in the country's four time zones and yes, the Eastern Time Zone has the most.

Eastern ... 48.7 percent of all TVs are in this time zone

Central ... 29.0 percent of all TVs are in this time zone

Mountain .. 6.4 percent of all TVs are in this time zone

Pacific ... 15.8 percent of all TVs are in this time zone.

When I talked to Michael Mulvihill, VP of programming and Research for Fox Sports, for the story one of the items that was discussed was the later starting times that so many fans talk about.

This is what he told me about what his reserach showed in regards to the later starting times: "If you take an average of our Sunday afternoon races, the ones that have green flags shortly after 2 p.m., they're actually down by a little bit more than the ones that (have started) later in the day or have been in prime time. The difference is narrow enough that I wouldn't say that the early afternoon start time is a negative. I just see it as a neutral factor. I kind of see it as a non-issue. I understand it gets attention ... and it's an easy thing for people to fixate on, this is something new that's not working, but looking at the numbers the way we do, I don't really see it as a positive or a negative factor.''

I mention all of that to remind you that Fox Sports boss David Hill told me earlier this year he would like to have later starting times on races so the races could lead into prime-time programming.

If you like what Hill is doing with that or something else or you don't like what he's doing or have any other comments, Fox Sports is making him available to fans. Here could be your chance to converse with one of hte more powerful people in the sport.  Hill will be on a chat at 3 p.m. Eastern Friday to talk about Fox and NASCAR.

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A couple of other things

# Lead changes have picked back up lately. There have been on average nearly 10 more lead changes in the last four races this season as compared to last year. Still, the average number of lead changes for all of this season is down compared to last year. Check out the info here in my notebook.

# Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns such tracks as Lowe's Motor Speedway, Atlanta, Texas, Bristol, New Hampshire, Infineon and Kentucky, reports that first quarter profits were down 34 percent from the same time last year. Admission revenues are down 12.7 percent from last year. Officials talked about upgrades for Kentucky Speedway as the company wants to put a Cup race there. There's work to make it easier to get in and out of the track and some items for camping. Officials said there's talk of adding upward of 30,000 to 50,000 seats to that track. Kentucky Speedway has a grandstand capacity of 66,089 according to the NASCAR truck series media guide.

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