There's alot of varibles in play here. For Rob to drop out of the top 35 first he'd have to finish badly (40th-43rd place).. the #8 car, currently in 36th in owners points, is 65 points behind RG..he would have to finish some where near 20th place to surpass RG (assuming Rob finished near last). Then you would have to take into consideration that the cars in 30th thru 35th in owners points all had quite a bit better race than Rob too.. so the #34, #77, #39, #20, #71, & #5 would all have to finish well. While possible, I think it's highly unlikely that Rob would fall out of the top 35 after Bristol. Hopefully, he will gain places in the standings.
and like you said the Mart is probably not his favorite place! It seems something weird always happens there for him. Blown motors, broken rear ends, and other parts that don't usualy break at a place like martinsville. I like what ive seen so far though. Daytona was a giveaway, not much he could do about that. What I like is that it seems that these cars have more adjustability built into them and they respond well to adjustments, so you see the car gain as the race goes on. In the past it seemed that no matter what they threw at the cars they didin't respond. Im happy to see that they can recover if they don't unload well or start the race well and get a respectable finish. I just wish he hadn't had that tire problem last race.
It looks like his chance of moving forward will be even better with only 45 cars on the entry list. There's a good chance after this race that we might not see 43 cars show up unless the $$$$$ starts rolling in for some of these guys.