BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Long Pond, Pa. — Mark Martin is keeping the heat turned on high; and is getting some help from a few friends. Martin showed that he’s got the only triangle-shaped track on the schedule figured out when he ran the fastest lap time in the first session (53.731 seconds at 167.501 mph) and the fifth fastest in the second session on practice, Saturday.

Matt Kenseth joined in Martin in the first session as a top-10 runner after Kenseth toured this 2.5-mile track 10th fastest. Elliott Sadler made it into the top-10 in the second session, and ran a lap that was third fastest.

Robbie Reiser told www.teamfordracing.com that there’s no concern regarding transmissions here, despite troubles during qualifying in not only Kenseth’s car but also Jeff Burton’s. “They’ll be all right,” Reiser said with his hands wrist-deep in a torn down tranny.

D3 NEWS
According to Doug Yates, the new cylinder head will make its Pocono début on five cars. The drivers that will have the new heads include: Kenseth, Sadler, Dale Jarrett, Greg Biffle and Jeff Burton.

“We’ve been trying to go a little slow here to make sure we address issues or possible issues,” Yates relayed of the status of the new engine package. “We had a couple of things we needed to fix and it seems like we’ve got those issues behind us, hopefully.

“The engine is looking pretty good,” Yates added. “Hopefully starting at Chicago we’ll have a whole fleet powered with the D3.”

Yates did make note the engine that powered the fastest Ford in Friday’s qualifying session was the old generation package, the C3, found in Martin’s Taurus.