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With two races left before the Chase for the Sprint Cup, NASCAR heads to Auto Club Speedway in California. California is a state known for many things, from fine wines to celebrities to the greatest football game of Brett Favre’s career, a 41-7 rout of the Oakland Raiders the day after his father, Irvin, passed away.
With all the attention Favre’s been getting as of late, I feel it’s fair to direct our attention to a driver who similarly can’t retire from the sport he loves: Mark Martin.
One of the reasons why I’ve been pulling so hard for Favre this season is because I’ve heard much of the same criticism used against Martin, in his many attempts to retire. Sometimes it’s just too hard to walk away from what you’ve been doing your whole life.
Truth is, Martin’s been on top of his game these past few years the same way Favre has: producing enough to warrant continued mentions as one of the best in the field week in and week out.
Martin led the NEXTEL Cup points through four races last year, and even still had a shot at the Chase after missing the first few of his 12 scheduled off weeks. This year, despite running in equipment of far lesser quality, Martin has nearly equaled his top-10s from last year (eight so far, compared to 11 last year) and nearly won at Phoenix. He also won the Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas.
Even more important, however, is what Martin’s done to make part-time driving a viable option for aging stars, especially splitting rides with development drivers.
Originally, the plan was to put two “retiring” drivers in one car to split a full season. In a 2005 interview with Claire B. Lang, Martin dismissed the option of splitting a schedule between two retiring drivers as “far-fetched” and “hard to do right.”
At the time, Jack Roush was looking to fill the No. 6 Ford for 2006 while waiting for Jamie McMurray to take over the car in 2007. Roush’s idea was to split the car between Martin and Rusty Wallace for the 2006 season.
While the Martin-Wallace deal never materialized, Martin has run part-time schedules in Sprint Cup with development drivers the past few seasons, and the results have been surprisingly decent.
Martin’s average finishes were 14.5 in 2007 and 13.9 this year, not far out of line from his career average of 13.3.
Last season, the No. 01 Ginn Racing Chevrolet that Martin split with Regan Smith
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