He refuses to deal in hypotheticals. If an unsuspecting reporter decides to
throw that kind of softball question at him, Mark fires right back, normally
answering with "I don't know," or "What does that matter?"He can be downright frustrating to a scribe looking for an astute or humorous quote. In short, Mark tells it like it is: plain, simple and to the point. He doesn't have time or the patience to deal with, as he is wont to say, "something that's out of my control."
Yet in Sunday night's celebration in Victory Lane after winning the Coca-Cola 600, we saw an uncharacteristic side of Mark that will stay with many observers for a long time. He finally was able to do something that was in his control -- and made a lot of people happy in the process.
I know what I saw after Sunday's race will stay with me, and will likely forever favorably color my impression of Mark and his sometimes acerbic personality. For it was Sunday night that we saw the usually hidden soft and generous side of Mark, the side most people don't know about and even fewer write about.
Just seconds after climbing out of his No. 6 Ford, Mark jubilantly lifted his arms in the air in triumph for the first time in two years, enjoyed a few well-deserved pats on the back from team members and then uttered two words that showed a remarkable amount of class for a guy who can be difficult to work with at times.
"Where's Janet?" Mark asked, scanning the crowd, seeking Janet Hogan, an average, every day NASCAR fan who Mark had just made a millionaire by winning the race and earning the Winston No Bull 5 million-dollar prize that goes with it.
Here was the diminutive Mark, coming off his biggest race in a long time, and his first thought was to share the spotlight with the fan he just made rich, rather than hogging the glory he so richly deserved after last season's miserable run, perhaps the worst year of Mark's career.
No one would have blamed Mark if he had wanted the spotlight all to himself. But instead, after driving a grueling 400 laps around the 1½-mile Lowe's Motor Speedway in suburban Charlotte, Mark wanted to share it with a middle-aged woman from Sterling, Va., who coincidentally was attending her first Winston Cup race.
To be precise, Mark won two million bucks from Winston -- a cool million for
himself and another just-as-cool million for Hogan, a sergeant with the U.S.
Capitol Police in Washington, D.C. That was just icing on the cake to the
$280,033 Mark earned for winning the 600-mile race, the longest, most grueling
event on the 36-race schedule."Pretty cool, isn't it," Mark said in his characteristic mild-mannered persona.
But wait, there's more.
Rather than keeping his own seven-figure Winston check for himself, Mark graciously decided to give the lion's share to his loyal crew members, who have stuck with him through the last two tough years.
"I'll just keep a little bit of that No Bull million, but the rest of it, most of it, I promised to my guys," Mark said. "They deserved it for all the hard work they put in and the rough times they've had to go through."
And who says loyalty, honesty and integrity doesn't pay?
Ironically, as I watched the events in Victory Lane unfold, I thought back to last August when I last interviewed Mark. I was sitting on the 10th-floor of a hotel, enjoying a working vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., when I answered the phone and heard, "This is Mark Martin. I'm supposed to do an interview with you." I was in a great mood. The vacation, the beach and the sun were near-perfect. But Mark wasn't in as great of a mood, due mainly to the ongoing frustration he had been experiencing week after week along with his three Roush Racing teammates. Needless to say, virtually nothing was going right for Mark in 2001, and it was almost a carbon copy with his teammates.
I immediately started tossing Mark the kinds of questions he hates --
hypotheticals and what ifs. I was looking for the cute quote, but he wasn't
giving an inch. At two points in the 20-minute conversation, I even stopped to
tell Mark I wasn't trying to be combative, just merely looking for what I thought
were simple answers to my questions.To his credit, while his tone grew a bit perturbed at times, Mark remained professional. He even turned the tables and asked me a few what if questions. He wanted to see how I liked that line of questioning. He wanted me to know the true meaning of frustration, when you can't give legitimate answers to questions that ask things out of your control. He wanted me to see what it was like to be him, knowing everyone wanted to know what was wrong with his team, why it wasn't winning and why it just wasn't very good.
And why he didn't have the answers.
Sunday night, I finally understood what Mark went through last season and why he acted the way he did during that interview. And despite the much better start he's had in 2002, I realized the burden he has been carrying with him for two years. I understood what it was like to be him, to be faced with questions you can't answer.
Mark wasn't being difficult in August. He was merely dealing in reality -- both the overwhelming harshness, as well as the precious few times he saw the good side in the last 24 months.
It may sound trite, but Mark showed why, even with all the frustration he experienced last year, he's still such a class act -- albeit sometimes a tad difficult -- after Sunday's race. At a time when he should have been thinking about himself, he thought about everyone else who was on hand to help him share in such a sweet win: his wife, children, crew members and a very happy Janet Hogan.
Despite the $2 million plus on the table for the taking, that Mark was able to make so many people happy and to share in their joy -- that, perhaps, was the most rewarding part of Sunday's victory. It was the one thing he could control, and he did it with inspiring aplomb.
