Martin to enjoy ride
Native of Batesville learns contentment
For more than 30 seasons as a NASCAR driver, Batesville’s Mark Martin was one of the most intense figures in stock car racing.
Success came in bunches as he rose to the top of the sport. Satisfaction with that success was another thing altogether.
But when he is inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday night in Charlotte, N.C., Martin said he wants to do something he was rarely able to do during his career: Enjoy it.
“It’s really important to me for me to enjoy it because that was one of my shortfalls in my career … I never let myself enjoy much of my success,” Martin said during a teleconference
last week. “I was too concerned about how we were going to win the next race.”
During 31 seasons in the Cup Series, NASCAR’s premier racing body, Martin collected 40 victories, 56 poles, raced more than 250,000 laps — of which he led 12,879 — and posted in
excess of $91 million in ontrack earnings. He also won 49 races in what is now the Xfinity Series — at the time a series record — and won a record five championships in the IROC Series.
He will be joined in the Hall of Fame’s eighth induction class by car owners Richard Childress, Rick Hendrick and Raymond Parks, and fellow driver Benny Parsons.
Martin, 58, began his racing career at the age of 15 in the spring of 1974 at Independence County Speedway in Locust Grove, the current site of Batesville Motor Speedway. He quickly became a terror on the dirt tracks across Arkansas, racing and defeating drivers twice his age. He moved on to the asphalt tracks of the Midwest with the American Speed Association and eventually won 22 races in the series and four ASA championships.
At age 22, he began his first stint in NASCAR and earned his first career pole in only his third start. But after a little more than 2½ seasons with little success, Martin sold his NASCAR operation and returned to the short tracks of the Midwest.
Martin said hitting the NASCAR ranks at such a young age, failing and eventually returning is one of his proudest accomplishments.
“The fact that I made it to NASCAR at such a young age — at the time, it was an amazingly young age — and then fell on my face and had to go back home and start my career over again,” he said. “I would say the perseverance, if you sum it up in one word. Going back, starting a career all over again from scratch and building my way back to a second chance.
“When I left NASCAR to go back to Wisconsin, I was a broken man, obviously — physically and emotionally both … economically. I had no intention of doing anything but making a living short-track racing the rest of my career at that time. It took three years to get back on top and win another ASA championship [in 1986].”
In 1988, Martin was hired to drive for Jack Roush Racing, where he stayed through the 2006 season. For a quarter century, he remained a constant force at or near the top of the sport. Despite his success, he never won a Cup championship, finishing second in the final standings a record five times. He also never took a victory in the sport’s most prestigious race, the Daytona 500, although he came achingly close in 2007, finishing second by .020 seconds to Kevin Harvick.
Those things, Martin said, troubled him for many years, but not now.
“I let that rob me of an enormous amount of joy, something that I did let go of,” he said. “I have a lot to be thankful for, to be grateful for. I’m proud of what I accomplished in my career, and I’m not sour about the things I didn’t accomplish.”
In August 1998, Martin’s father, Julian — who helped start his son’s racing career — was killed in a plane crash along with his wife and her 11-year-old daughter. Mark Martin elected to race less than a week later at Michigan and finished fourth.
Afterward, he tearfully said, “I didn’t care if I won another race, but I wanted to win this one.” A week later, he did take an emotional victory at Bristol, Tenn.
Last week, Martin said the reason he continued to race through his grief was due to the responsibility he felt to his team and the employees at Roush Racing.
“I just didn’t feel that missing a race because I was grieving … to me at the time, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” he said. “It did help me cope with the horrendous loss that I was experiencing because I did have to pick up and go racing.
“I just felt like those cars were just bigger than me. It was tough, but it would have been tough sitting on the couch as well.”
Martin’s final championship runner-up finish came in 2009 at age 50, and he retired from racing after the 2013 season. He called his Hall of Fame induction the “last big win” of his career.
“Don’t forget that the people in that Hall of Fame are my heroes,” he said. “The founders of the sport, the real men that did it with their bare hands. I’m a little bit uncomfortable going in there, to be honest with you, because I don’t feel like I belong in that kind of company.”
Martin said many of his friends and family are traveling to Charlotte for the induction ceremony, calling it “the biggest family reunion in my memory.” And while he said he is terribly nervous about the weekend, this time he doesn’t want to take it for granted.
“I’m [going] to try to capitalize and maximize on my one last chance to say thank you to the people who made it happen for me, and enjoy it,” he said.