50-year-old Mark Martin wins Cup race in Michigan

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With the laps winding down in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan International Speedway, Martin and most of the other drivers in the LifeLock 400 were simply hoping to conserve enough gas to get to the end of the 200-lap event.

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"I always, always come up short in those gas things," Martin said. "I'm probably about two and 25 in these things."

Martin has run well this season but had plenty of bad luck. It looked like more of the same Sunday when the battery in his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet began to fail before the halfway mark.

Martin turned off everything in the car that he could, nursing it as best he could. Then he realized the race was going to be a fuel-economy run.

He saved just enough gas to hang on for his third victory of the season and the 38th of his Cup career.

Jimmie Johnson dominated most of the race and took the lead from Greg Biffle six laps from the end as Martin watched the duel from third place.

Denny Hamlin finished third, followed by Carl Edwards, Biffle, Juan Pablo Montoya and series points leader Tony Stewart. Last year's winner, Dale Earnhardt Jr., finished 14th.

Martin drove only partial schedules the past few seasons. He joined Rick Hendrick's elite team this year for the full season and is making the most of it. The latest victory for the four-time series runner-up moved him from 13th ż outside the 12-man field for the Chase ż to eighth with 11 races remaining until the postseason begins.

Gordon, a teammate of Martin, Johnson and Earnhardt, went to Victory Lane to congratulate Martin.

"I said, 'Old man, you snookered us again.' ... He's like a 21-year-old with a lot of experience under his belt, and that's tough to beat."

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