Will Mark Martin Be Wasting His Time At Hendrick?
Written by Rocky Kitts · July 16, 2008
Follow me down memory lane for a second. Once upon a time, in a place of employment far, far away, I was blessed enough to work with a very sweet lady named Rae. When Rae wasn’t chain-smoking cigarettes and calling every one baby, you could occasionally get her to discuss NASCAR and Mark Martin. This was before Dale Earnhardt’s death, and it wasn’t long after Earnhardt had snaked the 1990 Championship from Martin. You had to laugh at her, “baby, I tell you Mark could win just as many as Dale does, but he just doesn’t race like that”. She’d take a puff (I believe it was Virginia Slims) and go, “I’d like to see him do it once though”. Rae has since gone onto a better place, but I’ve always watched Mark Martin race with her statements in mind (especially last year at Daytona).
Mark Martin is a nice driver. By all accounts, he’s a nice guy. He’s handled himself with class and he’s had one hell of a successful career; but, and this is just my opinion, he’s a bad fit for Hendrick Motorsports. I had the feeling when it was announced that Martin would be driving the Five car next year, that it was just Hendrick making the safest pick that he could make. After the Kyle Busch and Casey Mears experiments failed, one has to wonder if he was just looking for a driver that could be consistent, one that had experience, and one who wouldn’t rock the boat.
Enter Mark Martin. Martin won’t rock the Hendrick boat.
But he probably will not win anything of substance either. Some of that is because of the recent history of the five car. Let’s be realistic, driving the fourth car at Hendrick is like being the fourth member of the Four Horsemen back in NWA’s wrestling days. You always knew that whoever the fourth guy was, he wasn’t going to be around for long, that he was never going to measure up to the success of the other three, and that he was only there to give back-up to the other guys. Martin is on a team full of drivers younger than him, but two of those drivers have multiple championships and the other is the most popular driver in the States. He’s the outsider. The old guy and the new guy. And while I’m sure that the other drivers on the team respect the hell out of Martin, don’t think for a second that they are going to waste one second of thought on whether or not Martin is more successful in the Five than its previous occupants were.
There is no reason for me to think that Martin will have any more success than the other drivers who have driven the five car. I just don’t think that the Five team is as good as the other three crews. I mean, I find it hard to believe that Kyle Busch just got really good all of a sudden, that he made some Faustian deal for his soul, and that is why he’s racking up wins like Fast Eddie racked up eight balls. Kyle was good all along. Don’t give me that he’s more mature; have you heard one of his interviews? Kyle still comes off as needing a good punch in the jaw, but he’s winning races, and finding out that the bank cashes checks for punks too.
Plus, and I know that I’m going to make some Martin fans angry with this question; but does Martin have the killer instinct to really contend for a championship anyways? Let’s step away and honestly ask and answer this question: How many drivers would not have raced at Bristol last year while leading in the points, whether they said that they were semi-retired or not? Name me one. Don’t feel bad, I couldn’t do it either. Not unless life or death were on the line. I know that Martin chose to pick family over racing, and that is to be commended, but it’s not a win-at-all costs move. Especially from a driver who has been so close to championships before only to see them slip away. Martin knows how tough it is to get close to winning a championship, and he let a chance at one go away without following it to its conclusion. Would he have won the Cup last season if he had run Bristol? Probably not. But, he didn’t follow the road until it hit a dead end. Instead, he handed his keys to another driver and let the chance at a championship disappear as the season went along.
Maybe I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Maybe his impressive run early last season is what re-awoke Martin’s desire to race full-time. I’m sure that Martin thinks that he can win, or he wouldn’t be coming back.
Over the last few years, Hendrick Motorsports has been the top team in the game. Jeff Gordon has won championships, Jimmie Johnson has won championships, and Junior is within striking distance of a championship in his first season. If Martin is content to be the fourth wheel in the Hendrick machine, then that’s what he’s going to be until he retires. He’ll have a few nice finishes, maybe even a win or two, and while I’m sure that would make Hendrick happy; if Martin’s coming back for a championship, he’s going to have to rock the boat a little bit, to get that little extra to put him in the race for the title. If he’s going to contend with Hendrick, he’s going to have to be willing to push one of his teammates out of the way. He’s going to have to really push his car and his team, and make the five team relevant. I’d like to see him succeed. I’d like to see him win. But to win he’s going to have to be the one thing that he’s always seemed to have problems with being, and that’s summed up by one word; aggressive. It’s not true that nice guys don’t win; but it is true that they have to act like bad guys to do it. I’m not saying that Martin has to put the black hat on, but he will have to get his white one a little bit dirty. If he doesn’t, he’s going to have to be happy with the legacy that he has now, 35 wins that no one can take away from him, a bunch of second place Cup finishes, and always being known as the guy that was always “this close” to winning the big one.
Rocky Kitts can be reached at the email address wwwthreestrikesandout@yahoo.com. He gets his good looks from his mom and his street smarts from his pops. He doesn’t like tomatoes, and didn’t before they would kill you.
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3 Responses to “Will Mark Martin Be Wasting His Time At Hendrick?”
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That’s what I like about FastMachines.com… we don’t have to agree with each other. I think Martin and the current Hendrick team are a perfect fit. I think Martin will get more out of the #5 team than the previous drivers have. I agree that the other Hendrick drivers probably all respect Martin. Where this is going to be to Martin’s advantage on the track is he’ll have teammates to work with, especially at the restrictor plate races.
Wins are nice, but I think Martin’s consistency will earn him a spot in the Chase when the final 12 are decided in 2009. After that anything can happen. As for Martin not driving at Bristol last year, while leading the points, that’s largely because he is a man of his word, and that was the plan before the season started. I also don’t think Martin was with a team last year that would have been a challenger for the title. But next year Martin will be with an owner that knows how to make championship runs.
I doubt Martin will win the title in 2009, but I bet he’s in the Chase. And the way Martin can drive a car, including the COT chassis… I think he has a legitimate chance to win the Cup in his final full time ride.
Differences of opinion are the fun part of it, lol. If we all agreed it’d get real dull, real quick. One thing that I should have touched on that is in Martin’s advantage, is that I’m not sure that he will be on as much of an island as the previous drivers have been. I never really felt that Busch or Mears were part of the team. E has avoided that because his popularity is impossible to ignore and so is his presence. But I still believe that Martin is going to have to assert his personality more, or his teammates, despite their respect for him, may not always give him the help that he needs. And although I agree that Martin was a man of his word by not racing at Bristol, it would have been a big boost to a struggling team if he had done so. There were many people in the pits that would have liked to see Mark race until he at least fell out of the top spot. I agree that he didn’t have to do that, and he had noble reasons for not racing, but I’m sure there are many who wish that he had. Thanks for the comment Rich!
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