hard knocks, a moniker he has worn often
during his illustrious career.Martin has come close to winning the championship often, finishing second in points three times. In 1990, a penalty for an illegal carburetor spacer at Richmond is all that cost him the title. Four years later, he challenged again, but was felled by eight DNFs. In 1997, he went into the season-ending race with a shot at the title but came up 29 points short. In '98, the best season of his career, he was runner-up to Gordon's record-breaking year.
For 11 years, Mark was NASCAR's most consistent driver, never finishing worse than sixth in points. Though he has never won a title, he scored more points during the decade of the 1990s than any other Winston Cup driver. That's why last year's ninth-place slide was so disheartening.
"I was depressed because I really have enjoyed being a championship contender for a dozen years straight," he said. "It was some sort of blow to me to not be."
Mark was as competitive as usual, scoring 13 top-five and 20 top-10 finishes, but he suffered six DNFs, his most since 1994. He led the points race after nine races, but a streak of wrecks and mechanical failures dropped him to ninth just five races later.
He never recovered. Consecutive last-place finishes at Pocono and Indy
virtually eliminated him from contention by August. Fittingly, he had two
more 40th-place finishes in the last four races, saddling him with his worst
points finish (eighth) since his second full season in 1988."It was because I had six DNFs," Mark says. "Without those DNFs, we could have contended with anyone except (Labonte)." All Mark needs is a little luck.
"We have to eliminate the DNFs, but there is nothing mechanically we can do about that," he says. "The things that we broke on our car are things that we had never broke before and the wrecks that we had were wrecks that I didn't have anything to do with other than just getting collected. Those are things you don't have any control over. We keep our eye on the target, and that is making fast race cars that are reliable. That's all we can do. We can have a disastrous year, one much worse than last year, or we could have the one."
If there is any justice in the racing world, this will be the "one." For a driver with such poor luck, Mark is as confident and optimistic as ever.
"I have what I believe is a great race team, the best we have ever had," he says. "I believe that we have a great team and a good opportunity to go out there and do what we have done in the past."
