Hands-down, Mark Martin is the champion of the "sympathy vote" when it comes to the guy who everyone hopes wins a Sprint Cup championship.

And why not, considering the guy has been the epitome of grit, competitive fire and guts -- while at the same time carrying himself with an element of class that never goes out of style.

“

I'm looking for someone who's willing to stand up to me and put pressure on me to do better than I've been doing. ... I know Todd will.

”

JEFF BURTON

But think about this, if you will. Just how cool would it be if Richard Childress Racing's newly minted pairing of veteran driver Jeff Burton and veteran crew chief Todd Berrier -- with a hand-picked assembly of crewmen to boot -- could win a title in the next season or two?

Make no mistake about it, even before this season of horrors began at RCR -- a season in which, uncharacteristically none of Childress' teams have won, and none of the four really came close to making the Chase -- the two men were thinking about it.

It's been said that desperate men do desperate things, but this move could be the ultimate in calculation.

"Whenever I think of Jeff Burton, I think of a serious competitor, and now a serious teammate, absolutely," Berrier said at Martinsville, in anticipation of the pair's first race together, this past weekend at Talladega. "The whole time he's been at our place, him and I have talked a lot, we're friends and we've worked beside each other, even though we haven't ever worked with each other.

"I hold him up pretty high because he does a lot, he don't give up, he goes pretty hard and he's really into it. He wants to go out there and win the championship -- to go out on top of this thing and so do I. I don't want to go away not doing that, so I think it'll be a really good fit and him and I will work well together."

If Talladega was any indication, they could be on the right track, as Burton led laps and finished fifth.

Sometimes, luck means everything at Talladega, but according to Berrier, Burton hasn't depended on that too much through his successful stock-car career, which spans 21 victories in Cup and 27 in the Busch/Nationwide Series.

"He's smart," Berrier said. "He does think a lot and if he's looking for something I think he can pretty well explain it, and it'll be up to us to give it to him or find it with this new car. And if it's not then we'll tweak on it. Sometimes too much information is better than none. You don't ever know, so I think he's shown he can do the deal and I think it's going to be good."

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