Rick Minter's OBSERVATIONS
Some key storylines this week in NASCAR.

MARTIN

Martin's fresh start

After spending 19 years at Roush Racing, Mark Martin quickly has adapted to his new surroundings at Ginn Racing, where he'll run a partial Cup schedule and select starts in the Craftsman Truck and Busch Series.

"I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life," said Martin, who explained that he is comfortable driving who explained that he is comfortable driving the No. 01 Chevrolet instead of his familiar No. 6 Ford.

"Just because I stayed with Jack Roush for 19 years doesn't make it wrong for me to drive for someone else," he said. "It just makes it strange. I'm actually already beyond that. To me and many of my fans, I'll always be No. 6, and a part of me will always be No. 6, but that's emotions, and this is racing."

He said he might end up spending the next 19 years with Ginn.

"I probably won't be driving [race cars]," he said. "Maybe I'll be driving the hauler or something like that, but I expect to be around. The cool opportunity that I have is that I get to do whatever I want to do. That can be drive Cup cars or Busch cars, and I get to mentor young drivers or do whatever it is that I would like to do there."

Edwards: Enough is enough

The last thing Carl Edwards wants is to have the start of a potential championship season overshadowed by a running feud with Tony Stewart, so he's trying his best to put it to rest.

Stewart carried the feud into 2007 when he said on his Sirius satellite radio show that he was still waiting to settle the score with Edwards. Stewart angered Edwards last summer by starting a wreck with Clint Bowyer at Pocono that collected Edwards and doomed Edwards' chances of making the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

"The next time that I hear Carl Edwards tell me that he's going to make me bleed, he'd better be ready to do it right then and there. Straight up," Stewart said, according to a transcript released by Sirius. "I don't care what the fine is from NASCAR. I've got $50,000 saved."

Edwards said last week that he believes he mishandled the incident and offered an apology.

"What I did wrong [at Pocono] was I got out of the car and made it a personal attack and said some things I shouldn't have said," Edwards said.

"Obviously I really upset Tony, and for that I apologize.… The things that happen on the race track, sometimes you've just got to keep your opinion to yourself. So if I could take back what I said last year, I would have just talked to him about it, not the media."

Woods look to expand

The Wood Brothers racing team, which has struggled as its competitors expanded to three and four teams, is steadily moving away from its one-car concept and putting much of its hopes on a third-generation family member, Jon Wood.

Wood, the son of team co-owner Eddie Wood and grandson of founder Glen Wood, is set to take the wheel of his family's No. 21 Ford at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. It will mark the first time a Wood family member has competed in NASCAR's elite division since his grandfather, Glen Wood, raced at Starkey Speedway in Roanoke, Va., in 1964. In that race,Wood started on the pole and finished third behind Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett.

It also will mark the first time in years that the Woods have fielded two cars in a Cup race. Veteran Ken Schrader will move from the 20 to the No. 47 in Vegas. Jon Wood, who is moving up from the Busch Series, is set to run 10 races in the family's flagship No. 21 and one in the No. 47.

The elder Wood raced in the Cup division from 1953 to 1964, winning four times as a driver. The team he founded has 96 victories.

Hylton chases history

Seventy-two-year-old James Hylton drew a steady stream of media members to the far side of the secondary garage at Daytona last week. They came to talk to him about his attempt to become the oldest driver to start a Nextel Cup race.

For most of the three-day test, he was at the bottom of the speed charts, but eventually he turned a lap that put a big smile on his creased face as he climbed from his No. 58 Chevy.

"That was a good lap," he said. "Let's go see how good it was."

Not having a computer monitor of his own, he walked rather briskly across the garage to view another team's monitor. His name, at that time, was 13th of the 57 on the screen. He wound up 15th, with a best speed of 185.445 mph.

"That's pretty good," he said. "I knew this was a good car."

Hylton is driving a car purchased from his old pal, Richard Childress, who once raced against Hylton and now fields cars for Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer.