During a year in which much has been made about the youth movement in the sport, the
old dogs that have carried the sport for so long aren’t being forced to learn new
tricks. They’re getting by pretty well relying on the old ones, it seems.Well enough, according to Coca-Cola Racing Family 600 winner Mark, to possibly contend for a championship.
It may be a long road from the winner’s circle to the head table at season’s end, but every journey, the saying goes, begins with a single step.
Martin’s old school, having been in the hunt before and finishing as high as second in the points race, in 1990, ’94 and ’98.
But it’s been a bit of a slow slide for the Roush Racing veteran of late with eighth and 12th-place results in 2000-01.
In the meantime, the sport’s been awash with youngsters, 20-somethings who act as if they’ve been running the place all along. Even two of his own, Roush teammates Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch, have been spending more time in the spotlight this year than the seasoned Mark.
But you won’t find him complaining.
“My philosophy,” he said, “is gonna be quite different. I’m happy to be 43 years old and a veteran. I’d hate to be 43 and be a rookie. But I’m also real excited about the young guys. I’m a big fan of racing and they’re not taking anything away from me.
“Man, I don’t want to be 23. Most of us that are my age don’t want to be. ... I’m happy to see drivers like Kurt Busch get an opportunity to win a race at such a young age.”
The young ones had another opportunity, this one coming at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. But a mental mistake on a late pit stop took rookie Jimmie Johnson from all-star status to tenderfoot in an instant. Despite a dominating performance – Johnson led six times for 263 laps – this was one that seemed to be given away.
Mark, however, isn’t so sure. In fact, he says his Ford was tracking down the seemingly untouchable Johnson before the pit miscue.
“We were catching him a ton,” Mark said.
After driving away from the competition on several occasions, Johnson
pitted his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on lap 359 under caution.
Although he had been leading the race, by the time he got out of the
pits, he had fallen eight positions to ninth.Buried in race traffic, a seemingly sure win suddenly became a battle for survival. And Mark, winless since the 2000 season, found himself back out front with the stars lining up in his favor.
Fending off Kenseth proved to be a challenge, but it was one for which Mark was prepared. Career victory No. 33 didn’t come easy, but that’s a scenario Mark’s also experienced before.
“I’m more tired,” he said, “than I’ve ever been. I will tell you that I’ve never won a race and drove that hard. There have been a few times I drove that hard, but I got beat.”
As for title aspirations ...
“This is big for these guys,” Mark said of his crew, a solid bunch who have thrust their hopes on a hungry veteran. “This is a good year for us. We’re top five in points and if we can start racing like this, week in and week out – we just have one more little step and we’re probably not there yet – but if we can keep picking it up and keep having good luck, we could even contend for the championship this year.
“There are so many guys on this team that either hadn’t been to victory lane or hadn’t been in the capacity that they’re working in and they wanted it really bad. ... This is their win, it’s not mine. I told them if they could win this race for me, they would share in my portion of the million dollars that we won and that seemed to be an extra-special motivator for them.”
During the offseason, Mark and Busch swapped crew chiefs, with veteran Jimmy Fennig assuming the helm of Busch’s program while Ben Leslie – who’d never won as a Winston Cup crew chief – slid over to learn what he could from Mark.
The early results have shown the Busch/Fennig combination clicking quickest – the 23-year-old stormed to a fourth-place finish at Daytona, won his first race at Bristol and is solidly in the top five in the points battle.
For Mark, the move has taken a bit more time to come together. Instant results failed to materialize, but things never got bad enough for anyone to see it as a failure.
“On one hand,” Mark said, “I expect to never win again. And I think
that’s the best way to expect it. That doesn’t mean that we don’t give
our very best. But I said before, I’ve been probably more successful
than I deserve, I’ve had a lot of great times in my career. I know how
hard this stuff is. It’s never been more apparent how hard it is than
it was in 2001. We made the change because we thought it would be
better.“Jack Roush and I have been together a long time and we know a little bit about what we’re doing. We believed this would be a better thing for all of us. I’ll say again, I don’t know if I’ll win 10 more races this year or if I’ll never win again, I don’t know. These things are not that easy to win and they’re not that easy to predict.
“But I’ll be honest with you, I think that we can go contend next week at Dover. Charlotte is one of my favorite race tracks, so is Dover, so is Pocono, so is Michigan. It’s coming. My time of the year, Ben knows it is coming. It starts here. We got the thorns in our side out of the way ... there’s a bunch of ’em at the beginning of the year. We ran fourth at Richmond the other week and I told ’em that was just like winning. ‘When you run fourth with me at Richmond, y’all won.’ I’m very pleased, honored to be working with some guys that seem to respect and admire me for who I am and what I’ve done.”
Working with a young driver, and now one with a bit more experience, has exposed Leslie to the extremes of the sport. While he and Busch were unable to enjoy much success in their short time together, many of their shortcomings have long since been passed off by Roush as a lack of proper equipment rather than a personnel failure.
With Mark, Leslie said, each day brings another opportunity to learn more about the sport.
“The plusses are that Mark’s able to help me with my rookie mistakes,” he said. “There are no (negatives). I haven’t seen any yet.
“I’ve been real fortunate to work with Mark and we’ve had a lot of good luck, a little bit of bad luck, but all in all, it’s been a real good learning process for me. It (the offseason move) actually has helped me.”
Leslie, Mark said, has paid his dues at Roush Racing. “He’s worked on
Ted Musgrave’s car and Matt Kenseth’s and he’s been around.“He’s a tremendous racer. There was no chance of making this team switch fail. The only thing I was worried about was that Kurt might be mad at me because I got what I thought was going to be best for me in these guys.”
His latest win bumped Mark from fourth to third in the points battle. Overlooked perhaps for most of the season’s first 11 events, he knows those ahead of him are within reach. He also knows there are those just behind him nipping at his heels as well.
“We’re not out of the (points) race. Unfortunately, we did get in two wrecks (this year),” he said. “But performance-wise, week in and week out, we’re a contender.
“Now, if we want to win this thing, we’re going to have to put some races up like this. And this race team can do it. The trick is, can we go to Dover and contend? Go to Pocono and contend? Go to Michigan and contend? We start doing that, start running like we ran here, this could be the year. It may be this year, it may be next year, it might be the one after that. We’ve got a long-term commitment here between all of us. It might not ever happen, either. I don’t know.”
Mark’s never been one to expect too much. Maybe because that opens one up for lots of heartache. And, like he says, you just never know. Unexpected wins certainly must taste sweeter.
But that doesn’t mean his team won’t put up a fight along the way.
“Do I expect a championship? No. Do I expect to win? No. I expect to do good though,” he said.
“We’ve got good people, good cars and I expect to do good.”
Suddenly, it seems, he’s doing just that.
