JoyDir.com - SportingWriters

Rick Hendrick, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. spent the last month talking about how those in-house, offseason moves would make a difference.

On Saturday, they may have convinced everyone else.

Martin and Earnhardt posted the top qualifying runs and secured the front row for next week?s Daytona 500. It might not mean as much as Hendrick Motorsports? 1-2-3 finish in last season?s Sprint Cup standings, but the latest sweep provided some validation to those changes made in hopes of bolstering both teams and getting crew chiefs Alan Gustafson (Martin) and Lance McGrew (Earnhardt) on the same page.

?The challenge was we wanted one team with two cars,? Hendrick said. ?Then they unloaded two cars that ran almost identical times. I know this is just one race, but no one here and no one outside of our company will know the effort that Alan and Lance put into this team and these two cars, and I?m really proud of ?em.?

The British ski and snowboard federation has gone bankrupt, but the national Olympic committee says athletes will still compete in Vancouver.

The British Olympic Association said Friday that it will put in place a contingency plan to make sure the 14 skiers and snowboarders on the country?s Olympic team can participate in the Vancouver Games, which start Feb. 12. The association said the International Ski Federation has approved a plan to let a subsidiary company act as national body for the sports.

Snowsport GB needed to secure $326,000 in funding by the end of January to stave off bankruptcy.

The British team includes Alpine skier Chemmy Alcott and snowboarder Zoe Gillings.