Mark Martin may have been the last person to know for certain that he was going to run a full-time Sprint Cup schedule in 2010.

Even if he hadn't officially -- finally -- committed to it earlier last week, his victory in Saturday night's new Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway certainly would have gone a long way toward tweaking his sometimes fickle mind in that direction. It was Martin's second win in just 11 starts this season in his new ride.

To put that into perspective, he now has twice as many wins as Jeff Gordon does in Gordon's last 51 starts. And Gordon, a four-time Cup champion (to Martin's none), continues to lead in the 2009 points standings as he has virtually all year.

Heck, if you want to play the numbers game, Martin now has twice as many victories as three-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson does this season -- and twice as many as the "other" Hendrick Motorsports driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., does in Earnhardt's last 35 races.

Martin's victory at Darlington also vaulted him to 11th in the points and rightly stirred serious talk of him making the Chase and contending for that title that has so narrowly eluded him for all these years. The more he wins, the more he moves up in the standings and the more bonus points he accumulates for when they are reset for the 12 contenders at the start of the Chase.

All of which makes for a great 50-year-old-makes-good story, but where does this leave young Brad Keselowski?

What about BK?

As impressive as Martin's victory was at the Lady in Black, the top-10 runs of rookies Joey Logano and Keselowski were equally as eye-opening. Darlington's 1.366-mile, egg-shaped oval usually chews up first-timers and spits 'em out.

Instead, they both not only survived but thrived. Keselowski finished seventh and Logano ninth, respectively.

For both, it was validation that they are making progress toward becoming competent and possibly contending drivers in the near future. Two weeks earlier at Talladega, Keselowski shocked the NASCAR world by actually winning in what was only the fifth Cup start of his budding career. Logano finished ninth for his first top 10 and admitted that he felt "lucky" to do so at the track where you can be running ninth one minute and 19th the next because of its quirky, challenging nature.

Darlington was a much better test of their true abilities, and both Keselowski and Logano passed with checkered-flag-inspired colors. (Continued)