Spoiler swap throwing Martin's team for loop

SONOMA, Calif. - The spoiler is spoiling Mark Martin's season, and if his Hendrick Motorsports team can't get it figured out quickly, last season's title contender could be a spectator in this year's championship Chase.

This time last season Martin had three wins, three poles and had established himself as a legitimate threat to teammate Jimmie Johnson's championship reign. He fell short of winning the title - Johnson beat him by 141 points - but still won five races in a remarkable season.

Duplicating those numbers hasn't come easy this year. Martin heads into Sunday's race at Infineon Raceway winless and clinging to the 12th and final spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field.

Crew chief Alan Gustafson puts the shortcomings squarely on himself and his failure to properly adjust when NASCAR switched from the wing to the spoiler back in March.

"I will be the first to admit I didn't do a good job with it," Gustafson said Friday. "We should have known better. We're paid to know better, but we missed it and didn't get it as quickly as we should."

In fairness to Gustafson and his No. 5 team, the switch to the spoiler has seemed to affect the entire Hendrick Motorsports organization. Often viewed as unflappable, the top team in NASCAR has suddenly become very vulnerable as Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing have closed the gap.

Johnson won three of the first five races - all with the wing - and since the switch to the spoiler, Hendrick cars have gone winless.

"Definitely, we've had to work harder on the spoiler," Hendrick said Friday. "It caught us a little by surprise. It upset the balance of our cars. We just have to work to get it fixed. You go through this."

But no one seems to be suffering as much as Martin's team, which could find itself outside the top 12 with a poor run Sunday.

The 51-year-old Martin remains upbeat, though, and didn't present as stormy a view of the situation as his crew chief seemed to have.

"We're not performing, but we are," he began. "We're better in execution than we were a year ago. We're taking what we have and we're finishing better with it than we did a year ago. Had we been do

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