Mark Martin is currently eighth in points and has 3 victories so far this year.
(Photo: LAT Photographic)
With apologies to Charles Dickens, Matt Kenseth and Mark Martin understand the old line about it being the best of best of times and the worst of times. Do they ever.
In fact, they not only understand it, in the context of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, they virtually define it. Kenseth was Martin’s protégé at Roush Fenway Racing, someone who learned enough from Martin to achieve virtually the only thing Martin hasn’t done in NASCAR — win a Sprint Cup championship for car owner Jack Roush.
In the opening weeks of the 2009 season, Kenseth and Martin were headed in opposite directions. They still are, for very different reasons. Kenseth opened the season with back-to-back victories in the Daytona 500 and at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California, while Martin finished 16th at Daytona and followed that with two consecutive blown engines and a catastrophic tire failure that tore his car up at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
After the first four races of the year, Kenseth was fifth in points. Martin, meanwhile, was 34th and off to a disastrous start in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports.
From then, though, the two have seen their respective fortunes totally reversed. In the most recent 11 races, Kenseth has just two top-five finishes, including a best of fourth at Dover International Speedway.
During that same period, Martin was victorious at Phoenix International Raceway, Darlington Raceway and Michigan International Speedway. He also posted four other finishes between fifth and seventh place.
Heading into Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway, Martin has moved up to eighth in points, while Kenseth is 11th, just 41 points away from falling out of the Chase.
That gulf could easily widen this weekend at Infineon. Martin is an expert road racer and Kenseth dislikes it. That was reflected in Friday’s opening round of Sprint Cup practice, where Martin was fifth-fastest of the 48 cars entered, while Kenseth was 12th. In their careers at Infineon, Martin has one victory and seven top-five finishes, while Kenseth’s lone top-10 here was an eighth-place finish.
Little wonder the two had vastly different opinions about how things are going these days.
“You want to win every week and put in your best effort every week, so when you don’t get the results it’s always disappointing, but you still can’t dwell too much on yesterday,” said Kenseth, the 2003 series champion. “You’ve got to move on to the next week and try to figure out how to do better.”
