Following the map supplied by the gatekeeper, you pass lot after lot
of attractive but not ostentatious homes, a few fairways and the
golf course clubhouse before coming to a sign that cautions drivers
to yield the right-of-way to aircraft. An address is jotted on the
directions, but you don't need it; gold lettering on one of the
combination office-aircraft hangers announces that you've arrived
at the local office of "Mark's J-Mar Express."After a quick glance left and right for approaching Cessnas, you park the car and go to the door, which is opened by none other than the driver of the No. 6 Valvoline Taurus himself.
Something looks different about him. It takes just a moment to realize the 17-season NASCAR Winston Cup veteran looks younger than he did the last time you saw him, just a few months ago.
Has Mark Martin, who just turned 41, found something that Ponce De Leon was looking for here in Florida? There's really no time to ponder that question. He takes you in, passing the formal-looking office with it's large desk and overstuffed leather executive chair, to a large garage area next to the hanger, where the two of you sit at a glass-topped patio table.
It's the off-season, time to get things done. A contractor will stop by to discuss some work Mark is having done at his house, just a few minutes away in the same development. The hanger is spotlessly clean (the floor is so well polished it looks wet), and a painter is finishing up on the ductworks and ceiling in the same room where you're talking, his electric hoist whining as he goes up and down. But it doesn't interrupt you, the room is so big that it's just background noise.
It's been nearly two months since Mark last made a public appearance, and you start out inquiring about his health. With most people this would be small talk, but in this case it's not.
For several years, Mark has battled back pain - pain so intense
that, at some points last season, it was almost impossible for
him to get into and out of his car without assistance.It wasn't, as many would assume, a racing injury
"It's not an injury at all," Mark says. I've had it since I was 18 years old. It was asymmetry in the back, one disc deteriorated and that affected the one next to it. It didn't affect my driving, but it certainly affected my patience., how much I smiled, how many autographs I could sign."
On Nov. 22, less than 24 hours after climbing out of the car at the NAPA 500, Mark underwent major back surgery. The doctors placed titanium "cages" packed with bone chips in two places on his spine. It was very serious stuff, the kind of thing where, if something went wrong, it could not only mean the end of racing for Mark, but the end of walking as well.
But Mark reports that the bone chips have fused as they were meant to, and he couldn't be happier with the results.
"I've got my life back," he says. "I'm a brand new man."
And, for Mark, that means he can now look forward to wrestling and roughhousing with 7-year-old Matthew, his youngest child. And you realize that this is also the key to to the driver's more youthful appearance. Throughout the 1999 season - indeed, throughout most of 1998 - he had an almost constantly furrowed brow, a rigid set to the jaw. You realize now that was living his life in what amounted to one continuous wince.
That's gone now. The pain, Mark says, resurfaces mostly during his therapy sessions.
He's in extraordinary shape and less than 60 days after going under the knife, Mark is already back up to lifting "medium" weights. adding more as he goes.
Mark's surgeon reported that during the back surgery, the only problem arose was in attaching the titanium cages - they are usually sutured to the patient's body fat, and Mark has practically none.
If Mark doesn't take the NWCS trophy home in 2000, it won't
be because of his attitude. In a sport that's filled with driven,
dedicated people, he has a work ethic second to none.Take his recuperation. Following his surgery, Mark's doctors ordered him to spend five weeks flat on his back, 22 hours a day. No end-of-the-year banquet in Manhatten. No seat time as his Roush Racing team did its aero development on the new 2000 Ford Taurus. No testing at the Ford week at Daytona. So what did he do?
"I worked," he says. "I took care of business. I had a laptop and a portable phone and my Rolodex, and thank God for that. All of that business was what kept me from going stir-crazy. I actually got quite a bit of stuff done, though I was hampered throughout all of Dercember and the first few weeks of January, and it kind of made the last weeks of January, well, hell."
Working is how Mark spends most of his off-seasons anyhow. He doesn't make trops to the Caribbean or play golf, even though he lives right next to a golf course. Several biographies list fitness as his favorite hobbies, but in reality, Mark doesn't have hobbies.
Although he says he enjoys doing it, all of that weight training is something he sees as necessary, a way to keep himself at his peak as long as possible.
The same thing with flying. Mark is an accomplished pilot who racks up 300 hours a year flying his own Cessna Citation jet, and he is in the process of completing his certification as an air transport pilot - that's a pilot's rating to fly commercial jets.
But flying is something he took up because it worked better than having a pilot waiting for him as he made trips from his home to the race tracks or to the Roush Racing garage, or to his personal appearances for sponsers.
"I figured that I lived right next to an airport runway, I might as well learn to do the flying myself," he says. "It was just something that I could do at the time. There's no way I would have time to do it now.
And, although the sleek luxurious Citation is obviously something
he enjoys, he makes it clear that flying is not a recreational pursuit."Don't get me wrong," he says. "I like to fly. I enjoy it when I'm doing it. And it's great to have a cool plane and be able to go whenever I want to go. But to jump in the plane just to go take a ride? No. I never do that. And I don't own a sport plane that you fly just for recreation. Flying, for me, is a great, cool, enjoyable, efficient and effective way of getting from point A to point B."
So what does he do to relax?
"I sleep at night," he says with a perfectly straight face. Then with a grin showing, he adds, "I just think that relaxing is for retired people. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I look forward to retirement. I don't know what I will do when I retire, but I know that I'll do it with a pasion, with focus, even it's just doing nothing. I'll do nothing with focus! But for right now, I want to make hay while the sun shines, and the sun is shining."
Don't think that for a single minute that Mark's life is a cheerless one. Not by any means.
"I have fun, he says. "Racing is fun. Winning is the ultimate fun."
And it's the winning that he emphasizes. To Mark, that's the whole point of anyone getting into racing.
Hearing about the intense pain Mark suffered throughout 1999, one can't help think about Dale Jarrett, who battled gall-bladder pain through much of the 1998 seaon, finished third that year, had surgery in the off-season, and came back to win the NWCS title.
Could the same magic happen to Mark, who battled pain during all of 1999 and was still able to finish third in the points standings?
"I'm not very good at predicting the future," he says. "I can tell you that the effort put forth by this team in 2000 is going to be exceptional. The result? It remains to be seen."
Ask Mark to predict when he'll take the title, and he says "Maybe 2000 - maybe never. Maybe 2001 - maybe never. Maybe 2002 - maybe never."
He may have never won more points than everybody else in a
season, but he certainly has won his share of races. Through
the end of the 1999 season, he had won 31 NWCS points events, plus
The Winston all-star race (a non-points event). His winnings in the
NWCS alone go well over the $20 million mark. And, perhaps as impressive
as anything else, Mark wound up the 1999 season in third place, his 11th
straight year of finishing sixth or better in the standings.If you crunch the numbers that way, Mark emerges as the most consistant racer in the NWCS for the past decade. His worst effort in the 1990's was a sixth place finish. He's ended up second in the standings three times in his career and third on four other occasions. He's under contract with Roush Racing all the way through the 2005 season, and he chafes at the "bridesmaid" image when it's pinned on him.
"Let me make something clear," he says. "I am a champion in my sport. I have won four ASA championships. I have four IROC championships. But, as far as championships go, I don't respect Rusty Wallace because he won the Winston Cup back in 1989. I respect Rusty Wallace because of what I see of him out on the track, because of what I know of him as a competitor, and because I know that Rusty Wallace knows how to win races. The Winston Cup goes to whoever got the most points, not necessarily who won the most races. I define success as winning races. That's what this sport is all about. When you talk about a great race driver that's what you should talk about - winning. And that's what our team is aiming to do every single time that we go out on the track. Win".
It's a long statement for a man of few words. As he says it though, you get the impression Mark really would like to take the NWCS trophy home. When he talks about his team, he uses the phrase, "championship caliber." And you get the impression he would like to see that championship potential realized - if for no other reason than to simply shut the critics up.
Proving himself is, after all, something Mark has long since done. From 1981 through 1983, his initial entry into the NWCS was an experience he describes as "a failure". That's despite winning the pole in two of his first five races and finishing four events in the Top 5.
The story of him driving with his wife, Arlene, to the 1981 Daytona 500 and looking through the fence at drivers he knew he could contend with, is fairly well known. But it was a sign of the times, Mark says.
"At the time", he recalls, "there were maybe 10 teams in all of Winston Cup that could do well, and out of them, maybe seven that could have a shot at the chanmpionship. And this was the time of Buddy Baker, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip in his heyday. There wasn't any reason to give a talented younger driver a break; there was no place to go."
Contrast that to today, with spectacular rookie seasons from the likes of Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, and Mark says, "I credit their success to the fact that, first of all, they were absolutely outstanding race car drivers. And second, every team is competitive in this sport, now. Third, once Jeff Gordon came along, he changed a mindset. Now, everybody is looking for the next Jeff Gordon. They weren't doing that before."
What kind of difference could it have made if a competitive team had been looking for a Mark Martin back in the early 1980's?
"I wouldn't have failed the first time." he says. "But would I have turned out a better person for not having failed? I don't think so. I think that experience, the humility that came with having to find my way back, gave me something - it was good for my character."
When he did get the chance - when Ford Motor Company gave me a little support when I really needed it," and a six-race run through 1986 and 1987 put him together with owner Jack Roush - Mark's career finally took off.
He's stayed, all of this time, strictly in stock-car racing, although the thought of going into open-wheel competiton has crossed his mind.
"I thought about trying it once, just to show people I could do it if I really wanted to," he says. But at that point, my NASCAR Winston Cup career was really taking off, and I couldn't take the time to try it.
"It's probably just as well," he muses. "I know that, if I were to cross over into CART or something like that, I wouldn't take long to get up to speed. I'd want to be up to speed by the second day, at least. And in that form of racing, crashing can have some dire consequences for the driver.
"Throughout my career", he explains, "I've been blessed with the luxury of being able to crash. When a NASCAR Winston Cup car hits the wall, the chances are, more likely than not, your gonna walk away from it. With the open-wheels, that's not always the case.
"I'm not saying it doesn't hurt," he adds. "When one of those big 3800 pound sleds hits the wall... it hurts. I was racing for 15 years before I ever got into the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, and it never hurt, crashing. But it sure does here."
Mark says he's very satisfied with the choice he's made for himself.
"I don't go out worrying about crashing, because I don't go out to crash," he says. "Somebody gets next to me, getting me loose, but I'm in control. I have all the control, and unless somebody wrecks me, or drops oil in front of me, or I have a tire go down, I'm not going to crash."
And as for his sport, he says, "The NASCAR Winston Cup Series is the pinnacle of racing. This and Formula One, although in Formula One, that world, I've always figured you were more or less born into it, you know?
"Besides, Formula One involves a lot of international travel, and I'm not an international kind of guy. I'm just an Arkansas boy who like to stay in the United States.
Mark, as you can tell, isn't afraid to be candid. He's frank about his relationship with Roush, saying, "He doesn't like it when I describe him as a father figure, because he isn't old enough to be my father, but that doesn't matter to me. He is."
Mark admits that he and Roush have had fights - arguments - at times, but thinks that just adds more to the father-son metaphor. The bottom line is, he considers his team owner (and partner in a team that's fielding NWCS cars for the up-and-coming star Matt Kenseth in 2000) a friend.
But Mark won't give each of the young drivers as much help as he used to because, "I used to help them all the time because I thought they couldn't beat me," he says. "Then I gave Jeff Gordon some help, and he came back and beat me. I wasn't used to that. I still help Matt Kenseth, though I don't know why. It makes me feel good. Besides, I figure, eventually, Matt's going to beat me whether I help him or not, so I might as well help him."
But there's a limit to Mark's candidness, and it comes into play when you bring up his family. It's clear that he would like to shelter his loved ones from publicity. When he talks about his family, it's not "Arlene, Rachel, Heather, Stacey," it's "my wife, my kids". when he talks about Matthew, it's my son."
But Mark is a little more emotional and open when it comes to talking about his father, Julian Martin, who passed away, along with his wife and daughter, when their small plane crashed in the summer of 1998.
A gilded frame on an easel near the door of Mark's office contains his dad's gold wristwatch, notes from the elder Martin to his son on flying, and pictures of his father and the airplane in which he died. And Mark is very quick to credit his dad for setting a good example for him.
"He was..." And here, nearly two years after losing his father, Mark stops speaking, obviously held up by the emotion of referring in the past tense to the person he has always most admired.
"I have met a few people who have had some of his qualities," Mark continues. "But I've never met anyone else who had all of his qualities. He showed me what what it takes to be a man. Things like always keeping your word, even in times when it's not the best thing for you. I can remember times when he was going ahead on things that I knew weren't to his advantage, and I can remember asking him about it and him telling me, 'I gave my word on this'".
Concerning the sport that he's dedicated his life to, Mark says "My father didn't really teach me much how to race, he gave me the tools that made it possible for me to race."
And when Mark talks about lessons in life, he says, "My dad didn't teach. He set examples."
It's understood as Mark says this that one of the examples his dad gave him was how to be a good example to his own son. And after just a short time talking with him, you get an impression that Mark has a fine example to show a young Matthew Clyde Martin - about character, integrity, hard work...
And about winning.
