Firin' up the engine

The break for the NASCAR Sprint Cup series is over and teams will head to Martinsville this week for Sunday's race. Here's a few items to forget about your busted brackets (Really, who had Western Kentucky in their Sweet 16?)

# Three-time defending track winner Jimmie Johnson plans to be busy this week. A test at Kentucky was postponed by weather last week, so the team spent a day at Rockingham. The team is scheduled to test at Kentucky this week, setting aside Monday-Thursday, weather permitting. The team wants to work on its intermediate track setups.

Johnson struggled with a loose race car at Las Vegas and finished 29th. He placed 13th at Atlanta, the last car on the lead lap. Certainly this team _ and Hendrick _ which was strong in the COT races last year has not figured this car out for all the tracks.

Still, that could be seven days in a row for Johnson's team if it tests all week and then heads to Martinsville. Here's what Johnson said in a release from his team about possibly running at various tracks seven days in a row:

“I know we only have three of these (scheduled off weekends in the season) a year, so it would be great to take advantage of it and do something else, but we haven’t had the runs like we want, so there’s only one way to correct that and that’s to get out there and start testing and get to work. I’m eager to do it.

“The one component that’s difficult is on the crew guys. I feel for them. They’ve been working their tails off, and then the added testing is even more for them. It’s really difficult on them, and I really appreciate their desire and willingness to test and make everything come together.”

# A fuel pickup problem caused Denny Hamlin's car to stumble late in the race at Bristol and he lost the lead and the race. He says the team is looking into the issue and testing new ways of picking up the fuel. Here's what he said about this the other day:

“We definitely had some issues with our fuel cells it seems like with our pick ups,'' Hamlin said. "We run our pick ups in the far right hand corner and just on a banked track like that it makes it tough to pick up that little extra fuel if you're not running under green. It's kind of a balance -- do you want to pick up all of it under green or do you want to have some that will pick up under yellow? We chose for the later and it made us not win the race but you can't always predict that those things are going to go down like that each race.”

Do you plan to change the fuel cells going forward?

“We have an engineering team that's planning on going to Rockingham and doing a lot of testing with it. It's coming up with new designs because we ultimately feel like we've lost two races at Bristol with the same problem. We definitely have to get it fixed. I'm for picking up low fuel under caution. I've been burnt with it many times -- Bristol last year, this year and Atlanta -- same kind of deal. It's frustrating as a driver to be able to battle back the way we did last week and have it go down the way it did at the end is definitely upsetting.”

# Fox reports that viewership for Cup races is up 7 percent compared to the first five races of last year. Household ratings have improved 4 percent during that same time. This comes after declining TV ratings the past two years.

# ARCA cars tested at Rockingham Speedway this past weekend as they prepare for the track's first race since the NASCAR series left it in 2004. The ARCA series races at the Rock on Sunday, May 4 -- the day after the Richmond Cup race. Among those testing were development drivers Joey Logano (Joe Gibbs Racing), Marc Davis (Joe Gibbs Racing), Scott Speed (Red Bull Racing) and Austin Dillon (Richard Childress Racing, among others.

For fans who complained about NASCAR leaving that track, here's your chance to show you support it. Tickets can be purchased by calling (910) 205-8800 or going to the track's website [1].

# Tickets remain for this weekend's action at Martinsville. You can go to the track's website to buy them [2].