NOTEBOOK | NASCAR

Truex not decided: With Carl Edwards off the free-agent market and Greg Biffle adamant he’ll stay at Roush Fenway Racing, the attention turns to Martin Truex Jr. and his status at Dale Earnhardt Inc. DEI has an option for 2009 on Truex, but the language of the contract is complex and it makes the option somewhat mutual. He said Friday that discussions with the team just began this past week. “I’m not really 100 percent sure what the deal is right now,” Truex said. “There’s a lot to think about. Our cars have been running real good. I’ve been real happy with all that. We’re trying to get our season back on track.” Truex said he’s happy at DEI, but not rushing into talks about next season or a long-term extension.

Helping a friend: So thrilled with Morgan Shepherd’s 13-place run last week in Talladega, Tony Stewart offered to pay for all Shepherd’s tires this weekend at Richmond. “Everybody loves Morgan to death,” Stewart said. “There are a lot of people in the stands that don’t realize who Morgan Shepherd is. They think he’s just some guy who drives a green race car that says ‘Racing with Jesus’ every week. They don’t understand that years ago he used to be one of the top guys in the Cup series.” The 66-year-old Shepherd raced 27 years in the Cup Series, scoring four victories and 168 top 10s in 513 career starts. Now he runs in the Nationwide Series, and his finish last week was his best since an 11th at Talladega in 2003.

Chasing the chase: Nine races into the 26-event prelude to the Chase for the championship, second-year driver Juan Pablo Montoya sits 12th in points and in Chase contention for the first time since moving to NASCAR. “We’ve been really consistent. I think that’s really key for our team,” Montoya said. “Apart from the first race, pretty much every race we’ve had a top 20 finish.” Montoya was 32nd in the season-opening Daytona 500 and had finished between 13th and 20th in every race since before his career-best second-place run last week at Talladega Superspeedway. But Montoya said he’s still got a broad learning curve in stock car racing, from figuring out how and when to adjust the car to make it better and communicating his needs to his team.

Associated Press