 | | Mark Martin is fifth in the Nextel Cup Series standings. Credit: Autostock |
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
June 20, 2005
02:58 PM EDT (18:58 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Veteran Mark Martin continues to get the most out of his "Salute to You" tour during his final full-time season in the Nextel Cup Series. The week before the Batman Begins 400 he was honored in his adopted hometown of Daytona Beach with "Mark Martin Day." Martin sat down there to discuss his final season to date, crew chief Pat Tryson and his Roush Racing crew and the state of racing in 2005 and beyond. Q: Could you ever imagine there being a "Mark Martin Day" in Daytona Beach?  |  | | Credit: Autostock |
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| Inside the Numbers |
| Mark Martin's Cup career |
| Category |
Stat |
| Starts |
634 |
| Wins |
34 |
| Top-5s |
220 |
| Top-10s |
348 |
| Poles |
41 |
| Laps Led |
10,773 |
| Avg. Start |
11.3 |
| Avg. Finish |
13.2 |
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Martin: I've lived here for over 10 years. The first time I came down here, when I was 14 years old, I looked around and said this is the coolest place in the world. And 20 years later I moved here, so I must really believe that. I love it here. I've had a great career, and the "Salute to You" tour has been all about saying thanks to the people who helped me build this career. The honor that was given to me today is just an overwhelming gesture of respect, which is more important to me than all the trophies on the mantle. So life's good right now. Q: Are there any feelings of sadness over running your last Pepsi 400 at Daytona next month? Martin: Not really. This place has not been overly kind to me. It's not been terribly cruel to me, but it's been a racetrack that's been a challenge for me. I've had a lot of disappointments here. I've had reasonable success with some wins here that mean a lot of me -- especially the IROC wins. Those were races where fuel mileage didn't come into effect, pit stops didn't come into effect and The Big One didn't come into effect, so when you have that type of racing you could feel good about it. I'm a guy that keeps my eye on the target, and I don't see much else around me. So I'm not seeing or feeling much sadness (about visiting tracks for the last time). I'm very excited about 2006, and believe it or not I'm smiling more this year than I ever have, and I think that's because I know this is the last round. I'm doing it on my terms and I'm doing it very competitively. I wanted to end up at the top of my game, and I believe we'll be able to say that I am doing that -- if not at the top, at least near the top, and that's how I wanted to do this. Q: What are the biggest challenges of the nighttime Pepsi 400? Martin: The first one that comes to my mind is missing the wreck. Handling here in July is a big deal, and I love that. That makes Daytona racing, to me, really racing instead of having to rely on other people -- other drivers -- the draft and all these things that you can't control. You have to rely on your crew and your team and your handling and all that, for your success and it's the best race from that standpoint because it's usually slicker here in July than it is in February. Q: Halfway to the cutoff to the Chase for the Nextel Cup, how would you assess your season to this point? Martin: My season has been outstanding, except for when I couldn't miss the wrecks in front of me. And we've had good enough performance on the racetrack to recover from those, so far. Today, heading to Michigan we're fifth in the points, though I don't know where we'll be after next weekend (Sonoma) -- so the performance could not please me more. We are keeping our eye on making that Chase -- and if we make the Chase, then we'll worry about winning the championship. But until then, it's all about making the Chase. Q: The teams of Roush Racing and Hendrick Motorsports have dominated the season to this point, so when you come up on one of those cars on the racetrack, what aspect are you considering: The horsepower, aerodynamics, who the driver is, or whatever? Martin: It's none of those, specifically, but it's just all of that. The engines are good, the bodies are good, the chassis and the chassis setups are good and the drivers are good -- it's all working. It's the same thing as when you're running terrible -- as we did as a group in 2001. It was because our engines weren't great, our bodies weren't great or setups weren't great. We just weren't getting it done. At this time, we've been building momentum ever since 2002, because in 2002 we had a great year. In 2004 we had another really great year. Some of the other guys had a great year in 2003. It's momentum that's been building, and we've been on the right track since the beginning of 2002, when we just missed the championship by 36 points, or 38 points, or whatever it was -- with a 25-point penalty thrown in there. So we (Roush Racing) have almost won three championships in a row, instead of just two, so it's been a second and two firsts, and we've been building that momentum. Q: It seems like you and your crew chief, Pat Tryson, have really grown together recently? Martin: Well, Pat did a great job last year. Pat came in, in December and had to do our whole program from scratch, and build it to where it was a contender. So this year, being able to come in and not have to start over again, and just have to rebuild instead of starting from scratch, our progress has been at a more steady and rapid pace. I think we were able to get out of the box a lot stronger and hopefully we can continue to build momentum. Our cars are fast right now and our communication is good. Pat Tryson is awesome, and I love Pat. Q: Is it easy for you to race your guts out on the track, when you have a situation when Pat made repeated trips to the NASCAR hauler after the race at Pocono to fight for your position at the finish? Martin: We had a flat tire in Turn 1 on the (last) restart, and two guys passed me. I was trying to save my life, because I wasn't going to make it much farther, then I heard on the radio the caution was coming out. Two more cars passed me and I passed them back, because I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be -- and at the end they scored us fifth. But after they reviewed the tapes, they put us back to seventh, where we should have been, so that's all that was. But Pat is a fighter -- otherwise our cars wouldn't have been as good as they were last year. He has fought tooth and nail to make sure the 6 car would have the best that it could have each and every Sunday. Q: After what happened with the tires at Pocono, what's your take on that? Was it camber settings, the wrong tire, or what? Martin: The people who said any of that must have amnesia. What about Indy (in 2004)? We had the same tire, and the same issues at Indy. I had two left front tires go down at Indy. I had one go down on a green-white-checker running fourth, and I finished 27th. So there must have been eight left-fronts go down at Indy -- and there might have been 12 last weekend, at Pocono. It's nothing new. (Pocono) is the only racetrack out there that's similar to Indy. So obviously there's a phenomenon going on there that we don't completely understand. It's easier to understand the right front than it is the left front. We didn't have left-front trouble at Pocono (but) we did at Indy. We did some things different at Pocono, and everybody going back will have to do some more things different to make sure that doesn't happen to them. Q: You're putting together a museum in Batesville, and NASCAR is trying to establish a hall of fame. What is your opinion of that, and what do you think might be your place in it? Martin: There definitely should be a NASCAR Hall of Fame. I'm looking forward to the day when that is there for everyone to enjoy. I don't know about myself. I've been fortunate enough to have a great career, but my career has not been -- it pales in comparison to Richard Petty or Darrell Waltrip or Cale Yarborough and so many others, like Lee Petty. I don't compare to those guys -- like Dale Earnhardt. So I don't know. That's not up to me to decide. Q: Would you change anything that's occurred in your career? Martin: No, I wouldn't. If I could've froze time -- if I would have had a pause button, I would've liked to have used it about 10 years ago. If I was 35 right now I certainly would be signing a new long-term contract, but I'm not 35 and I don't have any regrets and I'm not sad about my decision (to retire). I'm actually excited about my decision. You just can't turn back the hands of time, and it is time for me to move out of the way and become a fan of Nextel Cup racing. Q: What excites you the most about moving on? Is it spending more time with Arlene and Matt? |  | | Mark Martin says he's having more fun this year than in any other season in his racing career. Credit: Autostock |
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Martin: Probably just having the choice (because) I have no choice in what I do every day. I have a schedule to meet and I don't have any say in it, really, because I have obligations. I look forward to having the choice of what it is that I'm going to do. That's going to make it really, really fun. Q: Speak a little bit about your protégé, if you will, Joey Logano. Martin: Yeah, Joey just won the Hooters Pro Cup race at Mansfield, Ohio, Saturday night. It was only his second race. He's only three weeks past his 15th birthday and he's been waiting since February to turn 15 so they would let him race. And he won his second time out. Boy, I sure do wish they would let him drive the 6 car, because he is the one. But it's going to be a long time before he can. It's just going to be a long time before he can have a NASCAR driver's license. Q: What's your take on where the young drivers in the sport are coming from these days? It seems there used to be a lot of drivers from Florida in Cup -- and now there's only one. Martin: It's sort of potluck on where these guys come from. I mean, Rusty [Wallace], Kenny Schrader, myself, Carl Edwards are from roughly the same area. But it's just such an elite group and it's so hard to break in here that only the real lucky ones ever get a chance to get here. It doesn't really matter where they're from. Q: Speaking of Carl Edwards, how much has he come to you for advice, and what have you been able to help him with? Martin: He asks for a lot and I have had to give him none. He asks for a lot more than anyone else that has come along. Carl Edwards is paying attention. That's just the simplest way I can put it. He's just paying a lot of attention to what's going on. He comes to me at every race and asks me questions. And if he didn't come to me and ask me questions, I wouldn't tell him anything, because that would mean to me that he wasn't interested in what I might have to say. I'm watching Carl with great enthusiasm. He races and drives these cars with a fierce desire and he's paying attention. Q: Are you surprised that he's taken to this level of the sport so quickly? Martin: No -- that doesn't surprise me because it can be done. You have people that come along like me that are OK. Then you have people that come along that are like Carl Edwards and they're just better than the rest of them, and that's all I can say about Carl Edwards. This is just his time in life and he's taking it head-on. This is his time and he's going to make the most of it. Q: Greg Biffle said recently he had a lot of respect for you, so what did that mean to you? Martin: I think that was just a gesture of respect from Greg. He didn't ask me a lot of questions, but he may have been paying attention whenever I spoke, and may have really respected the things that I said. Maybe that's what he was talking about. He didn't come to me every week and ask me all these questions. He'd come to me once in a while and ask me something and I'd tell him whatever I could -- like I would do with anybody that comes along. But when you have somebody that comes along like Matt Kenseth -- why would he come to me and ask me any questions? He already knew. He was young when he came into this, too -- but he was there, and he already knew. And Carl knows most of the answers to the questions he's asking me -- but he's asking them to make sure that he's right. He knows the answers to 75 percent of the questions he asks me. Q: Some drivers, when asked about respect or the lack of it on the racetrack, cite you as a driver who knows how to race with respect. What does that mean to you? Martin: Well, it means more to me than all the trophies do. The trophy doesn't make the man. Fifteen years ago I would have had a different answer to that, but I've learned through the years that the trophy doesn't make the man. Respect is very important to me and I've been very blessed with a great career and I have had the chance to earn a lot of respect. | 
