Earnhardt Sets His Sights on Martin Again : Auto racing: Three-time Winston Cup champion trails by 45 points going into today’s race at Phoenix.

Mark Martin, a quiet young man from Batesville, Ark., who has a perpetually puzzled look about him, and Dale Earnhardt, a tough-talking, hard-driving, second-generation driver from Mooresville, N.C., are the only ones left chasing NASCAR’s $1-million champion’s pot after 27 of 29 Winston Cup races.

Martin, 31, has won three races and is after his first championship. Earnhardt, 38, has won eight times and is after his fourth title.

But the consistent Martin has a 45-point lead going into today’s $550,000 race of 312 miles around the low-banked mile oval at Phoenix International Raceway. It is a substantial lead, but not insurmountable with the Atlanta Journal 500 remaining on Nov. 18.

“I can’t imagine what we could do differently that could help us win,” said Martin, driver of the No. 6 Ford Thunderbird prepared by Jack Roush. “We always race to finish and we always race to win. We can’t change anything. If we could we would have done it a long time ago.”

Earnhardt noted that he was 109 points behind Rusty Wallace when he came to Phoenix last year and lost the championship by only 12.

“If we can pick up a point or two, or even if we stay even, I’ll feel good about going to Atlanta,” said Earnhardt, who drives the black No. 3 Chevrolet Lumina owned and prepared by Richard Childress. “I’m going to race him hard both places, and what’ll happen will happen.”

Earnhardt will start in the second row today, behind pole-sitter Rusty Wallace, last year’s Winston Cup champion. Martin will be two rows back, in eighth starting position.

“Eighth is fine,” Martin said. “It’s a lot better than 21st.” He started 21st two weeks ago at Rockingham.

One difference in this season from others is that there have been no harsh words nor battered equipment in the season-long Earnhardt-Martin confrontations, such as marked Earnhardt’s past feuds with Darrell Waltrip and Geoff Bodine.

“We’ve raced pretty hard all season, close enough to swap some paint, but I think it’s been a positive fight,” Earnhardt said. “Probably what set the tone for our racing this year was the race we had at each other last year at Dover. He raced me clean. He raced me hard but clean. We got through it and I’ve raced him with mutual respect since then. That racing at Dover was some of the best you’ll ever see.”

Earnhardt and Martin, who was seeking his first Winston Cup race victory at the time, exchanged the lead seven times in the last 63 laps before Earnhardt won by .28 seconds.

Said Martin: “A lot of people asked me last year, ‘Why didn’t you knock Dale off the road at Dover and get your first win?’ I had some people say, ‘He would have done the same thing to you.’ Whatever, but that would have been short-sighted. That would have changed the complexion of what we’re doing this year.”

Both are coming into today’s race after two disappointing performances.

Two races ago, at Charlotte, Earnhardt’s crew messed up a pit stop that cost him eight laps.

“We miscommunicated on pit road and the crew loosened the left-side lug nuts in preparation for a four-tire change,” he said. “They changed the right sides, dropped the jack and I left, without waiting for the left sides. When I got to the end of pit road, the left-side tires came off and there I sat.

“The worst part of it was that Mark had engine trouble, running the last third of the race on seven cylinders. Instead of us having a solid race and gaining points--maybe even taking over the lead--we ended up losing points.”

Earnhardt finished 25th, Martin 14th.

“We just missed the chassis set-up at Charlotte, and missed it again (in the next race) at Rockingham,” Martin said. “We just guessed wrong all the way around. Luckily for us, and strangely enough, the exact same thing happened to Earnhardt in the last race.”

At Rockingham, Earnhardt finished 10th, Martin 11th.

“It wasn’t neat, but at least we got out of there with four points,” Earnhardt said. “Now we’ve got to make sure nothing gets messed up here. We can’t make any more mistakes if we want to keep the pressure on Mark.

“Jack Roush and Mark Martin are tough cookies and they won’t give up. Their team has hardly missed a beat all season.”

Roush already has one championship this year. He owns the Mercury Cougar that Dorsey Schroeder drove to the International Motor Sports Assn. GTO title. That was Roush’s 20th road-racing championship.

Martin’s consistency has helped offset Earnhardt’s greater victory total.

Martin, who is in only his fourth full Winston Cup season, has 16 top five finishes and 21 top 10 finishes thus far.

Both feel confident about racing at Phoenix on a D-shaped oval much different from the high banks where they do most of their high-speed racing.

Said Martin: “We had a good race here last year when we led three times, once late in the day. In fact, we ran the tires off the car trying to win but (Bill) Elliott and (Terry) Labonte got around us and we wound up third. We know now that what we had in the car at that particular race and taking into consideration what we have learned, that if we could run that same race over, we’d do much better.”

Said Earnhardt: “To me, Phoenix is a big, sweeping flat race track. I enjoy it. I ran pretty good here last year and the year before.” Earnhardt finished sixth last year and 11th in 1988, the year that Phoenix replaced Riverside International Raceway on the schedule.

Martin has tradition on his side. No driver has ever come from farther than one point behind in the final two races to win the championship.