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CUP: Martin’s Comeback Nothing Short Of Amazing
Written by: Tom Jensen   
11/29/2009
Charlotte, NC
 
With all due respect to Jimmie Johnson’s fourth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, no one came up bigger in 2009 than Mark Martin, who finished second to Johnson in points.
Mark Martin scored an emotional victory at Phoenix in the spring, his first victory in nearly four years. (Photo: LAT Photographic) ยป More Photos

While Johnson has operated with the same crew chief and the same team since he began his Sprint Cup career in 2002, Martin opened 2009 with his fourth team in as many seasons, as he joined Hendrick Motorsports after running for Roush Fenway Racing in 2006, Ginn Racing in 2007 and Dale Earnhardt Inc. from mid-’07 through the end of 2008.

Martin joined the powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports team for 2009 as the new guy on a four-car team, and at age 50, the oldest full-time racer in the series. He hadn’t won more than one Cup race in any single season in a decade, and had scored only four victories from 2000-’08, the last coming at Kansas Speedway in 2005. And he only raced partial schedules in 2007-08, preferring to step away from the maddening grind after nearly three decades in NASCAR.

But after listening to Martin drive one of his NASCAR Nationwide Series cars at Darlington, team owner Rick Hendrick knew he wanted Martin behind the wheel of one of his Cup cars. So did the other drivers on the team. “Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt said, if Mark Martin will join our organization, he will make us all better,” Hendrick said. “And he has made us all better.”

The union got off to a rocky start. At Daytona, Martin qualified on the outside of the front row, but finished a disappointing 16th in the rain-shortened race.

Then, disaster.

At Auto Club Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway on successive weekends, Martin suffered engine failures — extremely rare in Hendrick cars — that left him 40th in both races. The next week at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a huge tire explosion tore the sheetmetal off his No. 5 Chevrolet Impala SS, as he limped home to a 31st-place finish.

After four of 26 races in NASCAR’s regular season, Martin was 34th in points, 189 points behind 12th-place David Reutimann. But then, Martin, crew chief Alan Gustafson and the team found its groove.

Martin finished sixth at Bristol Motor Speedway and followed it up with a seventh at Martinsville Speedway and another sixth at Texas Motor Speedway. The next race, he broke through with an emotional victory at Phoenix, his first victory in almost four years.

But nothing has ever come easy for Martin, and this year was no exception. The next race after his Phoenix victory, he got wrecked on Lap 6 at Talladega, finishing 43rd at his least favorite track.

The remainder of Martin’s regular season would follow that pattern — lots of highs, but a few lows, too. He would win again at Darlington Raceway, Michigan International Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway, but also post seven finishes of 30th or worse, mostly due to either mechanical issues or crashes not of his own making.

Nevertheless, he made it into the Chase for the Sprint Cup, just as he had in each of his previous full-time seasons.

“First I was really excited to get the 5 car in the Chase,” said Johnson. “Then once I watched them overcome the points deficit they had, lock
themselves in, I realized, ‘Man, we're going to have our hands, full. That's who we're going to race for the championship.’” He was right.

Although he ended the 26-regular season 10th in points, due to NASCAR’s points seeding system, Martin took over the points lead because he won four races in the regular season, most of any of the Chase drivers.

And when Martin opened the Chase with a victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, it looked like he just might knock Johnson off. But then the 48 team went on one of its patented late-season rolls, with Johnson winning four Chase races as he won a record fourth title.

But as Martin made sure everyone knew, he was neither frustrated nor disappointed.

“You know, I just have exceeded, I think, my expectations,” Martin said. “The race team has done everything that I knew that they could. I just didn't know, you know, if I could — I really didn't know if I could compete against Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. coming into this season, for sure. But I knew that I was going to give it everything, my whole heart. But I didn't know for a fact that I could measure up to those guys really in their prime.”

Measure up? That Martin did and then some.

“Mark has got obviously a lot of talent,” said Gustafson. “He's a great person. I think the biggest thing, his professionalism is above — considerably above —everybody else I've worked with on and off the racetrack, the way he works at his trade, the way he communicates with the team, the way that he works with his teammates. Everything he does, he is very, very professional, very dedicated to what he does, and he does it in a really positive way.”

Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus, agreed.

“He's got such a good spin on things,” Knaus said of Martin. “It's never done. You're never done working on it. It could always be better. It's just time to go race. And I think he brings a lot of that mentality to where we're like, ‘Look, we're going to work on it until the last lap of the race and try to make it better.’ He's got that desire that not a lot of people have.”

And the best may yet be to come. “Next year,” said Johnson, shaking his head. “I mean, this year they're already this competitive, next year it will be real tough.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED, and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com! Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to



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