This weekend the Cup series is back in action making its second short track appearance in a row. After an off weekend for the Easter holiday, teams have made the trip to the hills of Virginia to the little town they call Martinsville.

This .526-mile flat track has been the home to Hendrick Motorsports over the last five seasons. In that time, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have won eight of the ten races held at the short track – Tony Stewart won the spring race in 2006 and Rusty Wallace captured the event in 2004.

In those races the dynamic duo of Johnson and Gordon did not finish first, they captured the pole position – Johnson in ’06 and Gordon in ’04 – and both finished in the top-10 each time.

The Hendrick Motorsports organization has turned it on at the short track in the hills over the last five years, partly in response to tragedy.

On October 24, 2004, the NASCAR community learned another part of its family had been taken from them. A Hendrick Motorsports plane carrying ten people – including John Hendrick, Ricky Hendrick, and Randy Dorton, among others – had crashed en route to the speedway. All ten passengers were killed in the accident, as Hendrick team and the rest of the sport was forced to mourn while getting on with business.

Since that fateful day, Tony Stewart has been the only non-Hendrick Motorsports driver to visit victory lane at the half-mile speedway. Heading into the sixth race of 2008, last year’s most dominant team has been shut out of victory lane. The team’s newest addition, Dale Earnhardt Jr., has been the organization’s shinning star so far. Earnhardt Jr. is currently fifth in the standings, just 96 points behind leader Kyle Busch.

Johnson and Gordon find themselves in unfamiliar territory, starting Sunday’s event 13th and 14th respectively.

Casey Mears, the fourth teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, has also struggled for much of the season and is struggling to keep his No. 25 Chevrolet in the top-35 in owner points.

With things not going as planned for the Hendrick organization, heading to the Martinsville Speedway must be a reassuring feeling. The team has had so much success over the years at this track, this might be the weekend Rick Hendrick greets his driver in victory lane.

Which one will it be? Well, as we saw last year, they will decide that on the track.