On Outside Looking In

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. —  Mark Martin is the only Winston Cup driver of note who lives here and almost daily, when he’s not away racing, he drives past Daytona International Speedway.

He has been racing on the 2.5-mile tri-oval since 1982 and until last Sunday, when he finished first in the Bud Shootout sprint, had never won a stock car race on the high-banked track at NASCAR headquarters. Nine times, in 14 starts in the Daytona 500, he has finished worse than 20th. Last year he was 38th.

Does it bother him to have never won the biggest race in his hometown?

“I know you want me to say it bothers me, but no, it really doesn’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have had a better career than any kid from Arkansas ever dreamed.

“I would really like to win at this place, but I feel that same way every time I go by any racetrack that we currently race on. I haven’t lost any sleep over the fact that I haven’t won the Daytona 500. I hope we win Sunday, but I believe if you do the work and you give your very best effort, then you need to accept the results, whatever they are, because there’s not much else you can do.”

Martin, 40, has been the busiest driver here during Speed Weeks.

He qualified fifth for the 500 last Saturday at 194.196 mph in one of Jack Roush’s Ford Taurus cars, then won the Bud Shootout on Sunday and finished fifth in one of the twin 125-mile qualifying heats, which puts him on the inside of the fifth row Sunday.

On Friday, as defending champion in the International Race of Champions series, Martin led 23 of the 40 laps, only to lose when Dale Earnhardt drafted past him coming off the last turn of the 100-mile race. Following Earnhardt, Bobby Labonte also slipped past Martin and finished second.

“We gave it our best,” Martin said. “It was a good run for us. We just got kind of moved out of the way there. I had it on the mat and I did everything I could do. Dale had a really fast car and he just got up on me.”

The victory was Earnhardt’s fifth IROC at Daytona and his eighth overall.

Four cars, driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr., Rusty Wallace, Jeff Burton and Eddie Cheever, were sidelined in a wild melee on the ninth lap.

“I was just riding, coming out of [Turn] 4 and got down to the tri-oval and all heck broke loose,” the senior Earnhardt said. “I was just lucky we had a hole to get through. It was a little too wild at first.

“Once things settled down and we got to Mark, we just ran our race and counted the laps off. I got in real tight on him [on the last lap], down on the bottom. About that time, we bumped a little bit and that made a little room. Then Bobby and I pushed by him. If it wasn’t for Bobby’s help, I probably wouldn’t have won the race.”

Before the race, Martin said his three IROC championships were the highlight of his career, better than his 29 Winston Cup victories and his three second-place finishes in season points--to Earnhardt in 1990 and 1994 and Jeff Gordon in 1998.

“IROC is the one thing that I’m most proud of. Not the first championship, not the second championship, but the third one. Three firsts and a second-place finish in four years is something I’m pretty proud of.

“And don’t you forget, I won four times here at Daytona in those 24-hour [sports car] races.”

Today, in the NAPA Auto Parts 300, a Busch Grand National race, Martin will start 27th with a speed of 187.774 mph. Fellow Winston Cup regular Ken Schrader will be on the pole in a Chevrolet at 189.865 mph.

Last year, the 4,964 points Martin scored would have won any other Winston Cup championship in the last 20 years, yet he fell 364 short of Gordon’s record 5,328.

After the season, Martin received the National Motorsports Press Assn. award designed to reward “sportsmanship, determination, extraordinary performance in the face of adversity, consideration of others and the promotion of motor sports.”

In August, Martin’s father Julian, stepmother Shelley and half-sister Sarah were killed in a private plane crash. His next win, two weeks later at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, was dedicated to their memory.

Martin said he was looking forward to this season with higher expectations than at this time last year.

“A year ago we had one Taurus built and about half a race team assembled,” he said. “Now we’ve got a shop full of cars, a race team together that’s cranking out fast pit stops, and we feel like we’re quite a bit more ready than we were last year.”

But can they catch Gordon, who won 13 races last year to Martin’s seven?

“We will continue to race as hard as we can and do the best we can and that’s what they’ll do, and we’ll see what happens,” he said. “I expect them to run as well this year as they did last year. I’m not going to get caught up in expectations and disappointments.

“I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. I will do my best effort and so will my race team. I know we have a great race team and with Jeff Burton as my teammate, I’m very comfortable with the position we’re in.”

Racing teammates are often not very chummy, but Martin and Burton may be the closest friends in Winston Cup.

Said Burton, “If Mark and I went into Atlanta [for the final race of the season] tied in points, and I walked up to Mark and said, ‘Mark, my car won’t turn. I can’t get it to turn,’ he would help me fix that car. I believe that from the bottom of my heart and I would do the same because the reason that the two of us would be in that position was because we helped each other get to that position.

“Nobody on the 99 car [Burton’s], when we won two races and they won seven, not a single employee, not a driver, not a crew chief, nobody said we were slighted. They just did a better job than we did.”