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Could Jimmie Johnson's dominance be centered not on what happens when he's in the car but what he does before climbing into the driver's seat?

"I don't want to tip off all my competitors," the NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader says.

How did Brian Vickers help his team make the Chase?

"I'm not going to give away all my secrets," the Thomasville driver says.

How does Jeff Burton get ready for a race?

"I'm not going to talk a lot about what I do," he says.

In a sport where teams park beside one another in the garage and study each other's cars, secrets often don't stay hidden long. What drivers do between race weekends, though, can play a role in how they perform. Yet, what kind of homework do drivers have?

That's where it gets a bit sketchy with some drivers; others not so much.

Jeff Gordon? Tony Stewart? That's easy.

"I think sometimes you can spend too much time analyzing too many details," Gordon says. "What I do is I analyze what the car is doing every time I'm on the track."

Stewart follows a similar path.

"Preparation-wise, I don't watch videos and do all that," he says. "I guess I'm the old-school part. We didn't watch videos then and we don't watch them now."

Some drivers do. Maybe not like a football coach scrutinizing film, but they review races. It's been more than six months since the series last visited Martinsville Speedway — site of this weekend's Cup race — so some drivers will review video of the last race there to recall what happened.

Many aren't watching the entire race — although Vickers admits he did when he was a rookie — but segments. They look more for trends. When did the groove move up? Who ran well where? Did the cars get tight or loose as the race progressed?

They also will review personal notes and team notes, talk to their crew chief and, possibly, engineers. Is the tire different? If not, how did it react the last time? What changes worked in practice but didn't in the race? What were the weather conditions and how did the car react to them?

It's all done to help drivers asses their cars in the limited practice time they have each weekend. With a chance of rain this weekend, drivers might have even less practice time.

"My biggest job is to give the engineers and the crew chief all of the information I have and, if it's through notes, if it's through meetings ... I just have to be a computer," Johnson says. "It could be one meeting. It could be four meetings. There's note taking. Even video watching. Just trying to make sure that I've done all that I can and enter that race as prepared as possible."

Some drivers type notes into computers after each day at the track. At least one goes through a checklist in his computer set up by his crew chief. After races, some drivers will detail the information to the crew chiefs before leaving or file notes as they fly home.

Those not as proficient with computers take a different approach. David Ragan writes notes in a little booklet that fits in his back pants pocket. He pulls it out, flips through pages filled with small handwriting and randomly reads a note:

"Long run," he wrote about one particular race. "Got free ... and usually stayed tight off. Late in the race got free once."

The books stay with him for a while until he forgets they're in his pockets and they go through the washing machine. That's why he transfers his notes to a notebook at home. He has one for each track. He's learning how to put some notes on his cell phone.

While it might not be the way every driver does it, Ragan knows such study habits can help his career.

"Every morning when I wake up, I try to ask myself what can I do today to make David Ragan a better race car driver, a smarter race car driver," he says.

It's a question many drivers ask themselves, but few reveal, at least publicly, how they answer it.

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dustin.long@news-record.com