right down to his eyebrows, charging around the neighborhood. He likes to
hang out with friends and enjoys summer, you know, away from school.He loves to play football and watch Westerns on television. He can’t resist the temptation of a fresh strawberry. And his mom, Arlene, drags him over to the local mall now and then to go shopping. You remember what it was like shopping with mom.
“Yeah, just stand there and wait around,” says Matt between an eye roll and small laugh.
But he especially enjoys being with his father, Mark Martin, who happens to be one of the most famous race car drivers in the world.
A little bit – no, change that – a lot of what makes Mark Martin one of the best stock car drivers on the planet is being infused into Matt, who someday, may carry the family torch in Winston Cup racing.
Mark has a plan – well, sort of a plan – for his youngest child and only son. Basically, as long as Matt enjoys racing, Mark will make it happen for him.
OK, stop right there.
There will be no talk of grooming this clean-cut sprite for the rugged NASCAR jungle, at least not just yet. Matt doesn’t go to bed at night and dream about winning the Daytona 500 or Winston Cup championship. But it’s no secret that his father is giving him all the tools necessary to get a solid racing education.
“It’s not any big deal to him really,” says daddy Martin, who has wheeled the No. 6 Roush Racing Ford since Jack Roush climbed into the Winston Cup ring in 1988. “It’s just a small piece in his life. It’s not what he eats and breathes and sleeps for. It’s something he enjoys doing.
“He’s a pretty well-rounded kid. He’s got a lot of interests. Racing isn’t his only interest in life, not at 10 years old. He’s got some other interests, too. He’s doing well with it.”
Matt’s racing career – if you want to use that word – started three years ago when Mark, who moved his family to Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1994, bought a quarter-midget race car and sent his second-grader down the road to a dinky little track in Apopka. It was the only track in Central Florida that hosted quarter-midget events.
Mark didn’t get to see Matt race very much. Apopka runs its quarter-midget programs on Friday nights, when Mark was out of town most of the time getting ready for a Winston Cup event. So Mark hired Shane Henry to shuttle Matt to the short track and care for the equipment.
Every Friday night, no matter if Mark was in Sonoma, Calif., or the Poconos, his cell phone would go off like clockwork. It was Henry calling to give a detailed race report.
Frustrated by the conflicting schedule, Mark helped a local group of race-minded parents build a quarter-midget oval inside New Smyrna Speedway, a half-mile oval just south of Daytona Beach. Little New Smyrna Speedway, which opened in the winter of 2001, races quarter-midgets on Wednesday nights.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the trophy dash. Little Matt Martin sort of outgrew the eighth of a mile course near his home. He got good, even faster than Mark expected. Henry has watched this child prodigy advance to a new level over the last year or so.
“Matt has really been doing great,” Henry reports. “He’s lapped just about everyone in those races, except for two or three drivers. Usually, by the middle of the race, he has a half-lap lead on everyone.”
Henry credits much of Matt’s improvement on the track to the little guy’s thought process. Matt is already gaining a reputation as a “thinking man’s race driver.”
“His driving has improved because he’s thinking more on the track,” says Henry, 25, and a former dirt-track racer. “He’s doing better on restarts, making passes instead of getting jumped himself. He’s making passes when he can and blocking when he needs to, to keep from giving up positions on restarts.”
Says Mark: “In Matt’s driving knowledge, there’s been a tremendous change
in his driving from last year to this year. Big time. He’s more experienced,
more confident, more sure of himself and real solid. He’s just shown a lot
more maturity.”Now remember, Matt is 10. He chases dogs, throws rocks into the pond, picks up frogs, wipes his nose with his hand and stuff like that. He doesn’t keep a real close accounting of his track record. But the old man can tell you anything you want to know.
“He’s won 24 heats and features out of 40,” the proud papa says earlier this season.
Matt’s quick success has caused yet another quandary for the Martin family. Since he can basically beat the daylights out of the local competition at Little New Smyrna Speedway, Mark decided to let Matt stick a couple of toes into the next level of competition. That meant sending the tyke on the road with Henry again.
“It’s a lot of fun to win races, but focusing in on one little race track nearby is not the best way to expand your versatility,” Mark Martin says.
And with that, Mark bought some Bandolero cars with plans to race Matt on a limited basis at Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Summer Shootout Series. For those without an Atlas, it’s a 500-mile, one-way haul from Daytona to Concord, N.C.
“This is really his first year in Bandoleros,” says Mark. “We did a few races over the winter. They run Bandoleros at Speed World Raceway in Bithlo (near Orlando). That’s a quarter-mile track. It’s a lot more car. It’s the next step for him. He’s getting the hang of it. He’s won some races and is running really good.”
Matt may well be the most recognizable 10-year-old kid in America. Last year Mark and Matt appeared on 21 million boxes of cereal. It was part of Matt’s sponsorship deal – yes a national sponsorship deal – with Life and Cap’n Crunch cereals.
“Don’t throw away my box,” advises Matt.
Matt has been featured on several network television shows and boasts his own Web site, www.mattmartin.net, which gets its share of hits from a national fan base hungry for any Martin family news. Talking to reporters has become old hat for Matt, who held an impromptu press conference at Atlanta Motor Speedway the day after he won Apopka’s 2000 rookie division championship.
It was at that point the world realized that Matt’s mom doesn’t show the same enthusiasm for racing as his dad.
Later, she told The New York Times – yes the Times did a feature on Matt Martin last year – that she would rather see her son participate in some other activity rather than racing.
“It’s no secret, I don’t want him to race,” Arlene told The Times. “And
it’s not just the safety. It’s a demanding, time-consuming, stressful
life. Of course, I worry about Mark. But what kind of life can you have?
You would be nutty, if you thought about it all the time.”But the bond is there. The father-son racing links have been established. It has taken root and it looks like there’s no turning back.
“Motorsports is not for everyone,” says Mark. “For the people who want to participate, it’s an awful lot of fun. It’s something that Matt and I can share. It’s a real bonding, family, loving experience.”
Mark Martin, who started driving race cars at the ripe old age of 15, knows full well about racing and youth. Each week the 43-year-old Martin battles younger drivers, some half his age, for a piece of the Winston Cup pie. It gets harder and harder each week as Winston Cup’s youngsters see success and grow more confident.
And Mark knows a lot of guys from this emerging fuzzy cheek corps grabbed a steering wheel right out of diapers. It’s second nature to them to jump in a race car and go fast and win.
Going into the 2002 campaign, Mark’s last Winston Cup victory came in the spring of 2000 at Martinsville Speedway. Matt wasn’t there that day. Matt had to wait two years, a span of 73 races, to hug his dad in victory lane. Mark snapped the winless streak the night of May 26 when he drove the race of his life to win the Coca-Cola Racing Family 600 at LMS.
“He was there for many, many, many wins – many wins – Winston Cup and Busch wins and it was just part of the routine and we haven’t seen as much of that,” said Mark, in the hours after his victory. “His racing career is going real well. He’s won a lot of races and I want him to be able to be proud and he should be able to be proud of what happened tonight, so, yeah, it means a lot.”
Matt watched the last 10 laps from the top of Dale Jarrett’s motorhome with Zack Jarrett, Dale’s youngest son, next to him. During those last 10 laps, Mark made more moves than a chorus line as he worked lapped traffic with Matt Kenseth giving chase. It was an eye-opening experience for Matt Martin, who saw his father in a new light, the shine of a big, big win.
“It was awesome,” said Matt, a few days after the triumph. “It was like being in a dream and stuff.”
A dream and stuff is the same feeling a visitor has when visiting Matt’s race shop, which measures 7,500 square feet. It was built as an airplane hanger down the street from the Martin’s house. Mark bought it and turned it into a full-service racing facility, maybe just short of Winston Cup standards.
“It’s more like a shop that a guy would use if he had the money to have
some tools and equipment,” Mark said. “It’s nice. I haven’t had my own
tools since 1982 and now I have a reason to have some tools and equipment.
I’ve got a nice place I can go and make something. If I wanted to make
something before, I didn’t have any tools.”“I also have a real estate office in there and use it for storage. I use it for a lot of purposes. We certainly have more room than you could ever need for our racing stuff.”
That stuff includes a new Legends Car which has a power-to-weight ratio similar to a Formula 1 racer. Unlike Matt’s quarter-midgets and Bandolero cars, it requires shifting. Now don’t tell anybody this but Mark turns Matt loose on the private airport tarmac near the shop to let him practice driving using a clutch.
“I’ve shifted it,” Matt says. “It’s cool.”
Maybe Matt won’t choose racing for his livelihood. Maybe he’ll be a doctor or fireman or astronaut. He’s just 10 years old for gosh sakes. He’s probably wearing the same socks he had on yesterday, or running through puddles in the streets or playing video games and dreading the next trip to the mall.
Mark reminds everybody who listens that Matt is just a kid, a young kid, who has shown an interest in racing. Mark is giving him all the tools required to be successful in his interest. While a considerable investment has been made by the Martins for their son, there is more to their lives than just racing.
“I don’t take any more pride in him driving a great race than in him doing something else that was real special, like writing a terrific book report or any other kind of accomplishment that was competitive and difficult,” Mark says. “Racing is something we’re having fun with. Somewhere down the line there will be a turn from having fun to either not doing it anymore or taking it seriously as a business career.
“You won’t be successful at this thing unless you commit your life to it like I have committed mine. He’s a kid. All those things are out in the gray area now. It’s not something we need to worry about. It’s not something he’s worried about. What do I expect? I don’t know what to expect.
“That’s not important to he or I right now. We’re having fun; we’ve won a lot of races this year, which has been additional fun. You learn life experiences by racing these cars, stuff you can use every day in life. The disappointment or the thrill, excitement or gratification or incredible hardship or unfair circumstances. Those things are part of life you have to deal with, no matter if you race of not.”
But odds are Matt will stick with it, even when it goes from something fun to do with dad to serious business.
“Racing is something I want to do for the rest of my life and stuff,” Matt says. “I want to try to go to college and keep racing. People say that’s hard, going to college and keep racing, but other drivers have done it. I want a bachelor’s degree in mechanical and engineering stuff.”
And that, too, would make papa proud.
