has lost it, he can't cut it, he's just mailing it in. The consensus was
the 40-something driver would do well to consider hitting the links or
becoming a gentleman car dealer or perhaps joining Wally and B.P. in
the broadcast booth -- whatever it is washed-up Winston Cup drivers do.
And why not?As it was, the driver formerly known as "Mark Martin" (aka "Perennial Contender") looked mighty undignified -- and mighty unhappy -- turning laps midpack, struggling for the better part of the season to reach the rarified air of 12th in points -- 12th?! This was Mark Martin? Couldn't be.
But it was, and it was clear to anyone the season was exacting a high price.
"Last year, I was under tremendous stress and pressure to try to revive my career," Mark says. "I felt like I was losing my career. I'm not going to race for 20th place or 25th place -- it's not what I've done and not what I'll do. If I ever decide that I'm stuck there and that's all I've got, then I will opt not to be a part of that misery."
So, Mark Martin being the stubborn, ornery, feisty cuss that he is, didn't pay much mind to the talk. That isn't to say it didn't eat at him -- it burned, man, it really burned -- but the man from Batesville, Ark., didn't allow it to get the best of him. What he did do was precisely what anyone who knows even the slightest little thing about him knew he would do: He went home for the winter, worked a little bit harder, dug a little bit deeper and came back for more.
"It was one more challenge for me to partner with Mark, emotionally and from a strategy point of view," says Jack Roush, Mark's friend and longtime team owner when asked about the difficulty of the 2001 season. "My job was to get him back on track so that he could be confident in what he's doing and optimistic. That was the building part, to get his emotions turned around, so that he felt he could do the things that all the other people who are close to him certainly knew he could do."
In other words, Roush had to help Mark Martin become Mark Martin all over again.
Mark, 43, is one of those people who announce themselves forcefully without doing or saying much of anything. He doesn't burst into a room -- major back surgery in December 1999 makes that difficult -- and he doesn't tower over anyone -- he's 5-6, after all -- but make no mistake, the man fills a room.
What he does do and has done forcefully for 13 of the last 14 years last year being the notable exception), is drive the wheels off a Winston Cup car. In a career the likes of which the sport rarely has seen -- he finished no worse than sixth and as high as second or third in points seven times from 1989 to 1999 -- Mark has won 33 races, more than all but 16 drivers in the history of a sport that loves its history.
What Mark hasn't done is win a title. And, really, that's what makes
this season all that much harder to figure: One of the sport's greats
is second in points, 72 behind, with just six races remaining and yet
. . . well, Mark Martin might as well have retired for all the attention
his career resurrection isn't getting. OK, fine, he has won just one
race this year, an accomplishment that Mark circa the late 1990s -- when
he won 13 races in three seasons -- would sneer at. But the fact is the
little big man has been cruising along -- first, second or third in
points for the last four months. Still, all we seem to hear about are
the Jimmie Johnsons and Ryan Newmans of the world. People, please, this
is Mark Martin."All the extra attention the drivers are coming under, I think it's pretty obvious it's slanted toward the younger crowd," fellow driver Ricky Rudd, 46, says. "Mark doesn't really fit that bill, but that doesn't mean he's not one of the best drivers out here. It's just that he doesn't fit with the current marketing plans of NASCAR. With Mark, it's racing first, and publicity and all that is down the list, probably fourth or fifth."
In all the years Mark has been staking his claim to greatness, he never has been one to self-promote. And no matter what pleasure he must derive from his performance this season and what it proves to the naysayers who had retired him last year, Mark refuses to change stripes.
"To put it bluntly," he says, "I've never had anyone on the payroll to talk about me, haven't had someone pushed to encourage the media to talk about me. Certainly, NASCAR and TV enjoy the young-gun angle, and they're going to use something other than a (43)-year-old racecar driver to bring in the teenage demographic. The only thing is, I think you should earn your coverage -- and when you earn it, you should get it."
And because he doesn't seem to have a disingenuous bone in his body, it's easy to believe Mark when he says in his typically clipped fashion, "I don't care about (the attention), never cared about it, (it's) not important to me to be a superstar. It's important to me to be a winner."
Ah, yes, a winner. That, of course, is the rub. Can Mark be considered a winner, 33 wins be damned, without a championship? It's the age-old, sports-bar/talk-radio question.
"He's certainly deserving, as far as experience and how much time he's put into his career," says Dale Earnhardt Jr. "Mark has been in the top 10 every year of his life, almost. Granted, he deserves to win the championship, but everybody does if they pass them out."
Had it not been for some of NASCAR's legendary backroom politicking, Mark might well have won a title already.
Ask Roush about the first Richmond race in 1990 -- the second race of the
season -- which Martin won and later was forced to forfeit because of a
minor rules violation. Ask Roush about the loss of 46 points and wait
two-tenths of a second for his very pointed, very detailed response, lo
these 12 years later."Bill France was laid up at his home with two broken legs," Roush says. "He got a call from Richard Childress that Mark had won the race, and he had a dimension on his intake manifold that was out of compliance with the rule book. Bill France told (Childress) that, if true, he'd take the money and the win away. He made that commitment to Childress."
Apparently, Roush says, France, then the NASCAR president, was not aware a bulletin had been issued that contradicted the rule book.
"When (France) became aware of (the bulletin), he took the position that it should have been more clear," Roush says. "'We'll go back to the rule book, since (the bulletin is) not clear.' But it was clear. It was clear to the technical people, it was clear to the competitors, it was clear to Mark and it was clear to me that a deal had been made -- an unholy deal had been made that cost us the championship."
NASCAR, of course, doesn't agree with the conspiracy theory.
"What happened to Roush Racing in 1990 was a clear rules violation," says Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president of corporate communications. "I'm sure there were other instances during the season when Mark Martin had problems in other races. It didn't all boil down to one event where the violation cost him the championship."
Mark eventually lost that championship by 26 points to Childress' driver, Dale Earnhardt.
"I don't know if (not winning a championship) eats at him like a lot of people have said," says Bill Davis, owner of Ward Burton's No. 22 car and Mark's close friend. "I don't think it would be a huge thing. Mark is so at peace with himself now; he's so proud of his family, what he's done with his life. All that is more important to him than racing."
"The reason I'm not fussing and worrying about the championship is I haven't won it, and I'm probably not going to win it," Mark says. "I don't lay in bed awake, I don't dream. . . . Matter of fact, to be real honest with you, I'm not sure a Winston Cup championship would have a profound improvement on my life. Not sure it would.
"Obviously, everybody who competes wants to be the best. I would like that, even for a short period. I felt like that when we won (this year) at Charlotte. But it's short-lived. It's a little longer-lived when you win the championship. It's a huge trophy. It pays a lot of money, and it gives the media something to say. They can say, 'Winston Cup champion Mark Martin.' But that's the biggest thing it would change. Winning it wouldn't make me a better driver, and it wouldn't change me as a driver. But the thing that no one seems to understand is that if I sit here and strain so hard that my throat gets sore, I don't score one single extra point."
Finally, Mark Martin does say something, if not with force, then at least
with emphasis: "It will not destroy my life or my career if we don't
win it this year."Last year arguably was the worst of Mark's career. He has had worse points finishes than 12th -- he finished 15th in 1988, his first year with Roush, but that came when 15th was perfectly acceptable from the guy who hadn't yet become Mark Martin.
"We didn't have the result we were looking for," Roush says of what he calls a "terrible" 2001 season, "or the result that really justified the expense or the efforts that we made."
So before this season, Roush swapped Mark's team with Kurt Busch's. Ben Leslie became Mark's new crew chief, switching places with longtime Mark ally Jimmy Fennig.
"Ben Leslie came with some ideas that revitalized Mark, challenged him, gave him some direction he might not otherwise have had," Roush says. "He'd been with Jimmy Fennig for at least five years and at an earlier period when he was racing ASA. They knew one another very well. When one of them ran out of ideas, the other one did too because they had very much the same experience. One of them would start a sentence, the other one would finish it. With Ben Leslie, that wasn't the case."
Leslie deflects credit for the turnaround.
"We were lucky to hit on a few things," he says. "If anything, I feel like I've been a hindrance. I don't feel like I did a hell of a lot except sit on top of the toolbox."
Whatever the truth is, there's no denying the results: Through 30 races, Mark has posted nine top five finishes, dwarfing 2001's three. And Mark has maneuvered into legitimate contention for the title for the first time in almost three years.
But if history is any gauge, he won't win. For any number of reasons,
sentimental and otherwise, that will be too bad -- not least of all
because falling short buttresses the unfortunate notion that Mark
can win races but not titles. That idea is supported this: Each of the
nine modern-era drivers who has won more races that Mark has also
won a championship. And while Mark displays nothing but stoicism in
the face of any discussion of his career merits, his owner is driven
to palpable anger when asked why that is so."There is so much that has to do with what NASCAR does from a political point of view," Roush says, "that is subject to their interpretation of things and the reaction they have to pressure from sponsors. . . . There is only so much a driver can do. Mark has done all that he can do, all that he should be expected to do, to win a number of championships. Instead of winning four or five championships, Mark's been frustrated by NASCAR on at least one occasion and by my own inadequacies (as owner) on at least two or three others."
Roush is referring to his past tendency to make late-season changes to his cars, which, designed to help, did the opposite. And while both owner and driver insist they will not be undone by any such failings this time, each knows the likelihood of winning a championship is dependent upon too many factors beyond their control.
Win, lose or draw, it's clear Mark Martin has become Mark Martin all over again. And, because he never would say so, it's left to Fennig, his former crew chief, to sum up Martin's place in history:
"Mark Martin will retire a champion -- with or without a title."
