This weekend at Martinsville Speedway should be an interesting case study of in-season momentum vs. track-history momentum.

Johnny Sauter (No. 13 Fun Sand/Rodney Atkins/Curb Records Chevrolet) will be the test subject.

Sauter comes into Martinsville as one of the hottest drivers in the series, winning his first series race, at Las Vegas, and finishing in the top five in each of the last five races. Over that that span, he has an Average Running Position of 6.4, a Driver Rating of 112.3, 97 Fastest Laps Run and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 96.9%.

Those numbers lie on the complete opposite side of the statistical spectrum as Sauter's numbers at Martinsville.

Martinsville, in terms of Driver Rating, is Sauter's worst track. He has a rating of just 51.0, and has yet to crack the top 20 in any of his three previous Martinsville starts in the series.

In Sauter's three starts there (2006, 2008 and in March of this season), Sauter has an average finish of 24.0, an Average Running Position of 28.8 and has run only one lap in the top 15.

Kevin Harvick (No. 4 Bounty Chevrolet), on the other hand, has been strong at Martinsville (and in the three series races he has run this season, for that matter). In his four Martinsville races since the inception of Loop Data in 2005, Harvick has a Driver Rating of 112.0, an Average Running Position of 6.0 and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 93.1.

This will be Harvick's fourth series race of the season. In the first three events, he finished second (at Atlanta), first (at Martinsville) and third (at New Hampshire). Not surprisingly, he notched a stellar Driver Rating of 131.8 and an Average Running position of 3.7 in those events.