If Mark Martin wins the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship, it would be the biggest story in NASCAR since Alan Kulwicki’s improbable title run in 1992...
Tom Jensen
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Posted February 03, 2009
Harrisburg, NC
Rest assured, Mark Martin can still can get the job done, and at a championship level. (Chris Trotman/Getty Images Photo)
Editor’s note: This is the seventh of 10 stories in SPEEDtv.com’s “Countdown To Daytona” preview of the upcoming 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.
If Mark Martin wins the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship, it would be the biggest story in NASCAR since Alan Kulwicki’s improbable title run in 1992.
Martin, who turned 50 last month, has had plenty of chances in the 19 years he spent driving for Jack Roush, most notably in 1990, when a controversial penalty for an improperly attached carburetor spacer at the first Richmond race resulted in a 46-point penalty, with Martin eventually losing the title by 26 points to Dale Earnhardt. In ’97, Martin came in a very close third in a bitter title fight with Jeff Gordon and Dale Jarrett.
All told, Martin finished second in Cup points four times, in the process amassing 35 career victories, 41 poles, 243 top-five and 396 top-10 finishes in 722 career starts.
In 2005, Martin planned to retire and in fact spent the year running his “Salute To You” retirement tour. But midway through the season Kurt Busch announced he would be bolting the team at the end of the year and Roush strong-armed Martin into hanging around for ’06 as well.
Martin then shocked the world when he said he’d run a part-time schedule for new team owner Bobby Ginn in ’07. After coming within inches of winning the Daytona 500, Martin had a great start to the season, but Ginn ran out of money and sold the assets of the team to Dale Earnhardt Inc., where Martin again ran part-time in 2008.
But now he’s signed with the best team in the garage, Hendrick Motorsports, which has seen its drivers win eight of the last 15 Sprint Cup championships, including the last three with Jimmy Johnson. Martin got there, in large part, for two reasons: First, his teenage son, Matt, opted not to pursue his own racing career, and team owner Rick Hendrick worked on him hard to give a title run one more shot.
“If Matt would have continued what he was doing and wanted to make a career out of being a NASCAR driver, I don't think I'd be doing this right now,” Martin said flatly. “I think I would be consumed with trying to help him do that.”
But after seeing Martin run one of his Nationwide Series cars at Darlington last May — and being amazed by the race craft Martin demonstrated on the radio, Hendrick made signing the crafty veteran his top priority for 2009.
