Mark Martin turned 46 in January and said he planned to step down as a full-time stock-car driver after this season. But Martin, gray and diminutive, is not quietly driving off into the sunset.
By finishing third in the MBNA RacePoints 400 on Sunday, Martin climbed to 6th place from 12th in the NASCAR Nextel Cup standings. More significant, Martin has become the sport's most vocal, and respected, elder statesmen.
And Martin is alarmed by what he is seeing on the racetrack recently.
PHOTO: AP
Through 13 races this season, Nextel Cup races have been cluttered with wrecks. Sunday's race was relatively quiet, with only seven caution flags and three accidents. Martin remembers when most races, or more of them, used to be that way.
"You can wreck them every week," he said, referring to the drivers, "and it seems like you can keep your job."
Through the first 13 races of last season, there were 102 caution flags. Through 13 races this season, there have been 144 -- a 41 percent increase. Drivers say cars are so evenly matched, and so much money is at stake, that track position is paramount.
Clashes turn into crashes, which dissolve into contentious finger-pointing. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon, two of NASCAR's most prominent drivers, went after each other Sunday after Stewart nudged Gordon's car from behind, sending him spinning into the wall.
Gordon said Stewart was too impatient. Stewart said Gordon would not let him pass. Both seemed to agree that the accident, which occurred on the 42nd of 400 laps, happened way too early.
"I just think it's a little uncalled for to start something that fast," Gordon said.
Stewart said drivers in general -- and Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman, in particular -- should be more respectful. He said every driver should attend a seminar of give-and-take on a racetrack. The seminar, he said, should be taught by Mark Martin.
"It's a group of them who thinks that the roads are named after them," Stewart said after the race.
Martin took Stewart's suggestion as a compliment. Martin said he had not been faultless during his Nextel Cup career, which stretches to 1981, and he said that he would not have much to teach Gordon, and that Stewart could also be an instructor.
But Martin says he thinks he has a simple solution to curb the problem: hand a reckless driver a tool box.
"Man, we used to fix these things ourselves," he said. "And we used to get fired if we wrecked them. You'd wreck one about four, five, six times, and you were out of a ride. That's not like that anymore."
Younger drivers are under much more pressure to produce, he said. So is Martin. That is one of the reasons why he plans to stop driving full time. He still enjoys himself, he said: Martin raced Kyle Busch, a rookie, cleanly most of Sunday afternoon.
"It was cool to be able to run up there with all the veterans like Mark Martin and Elliott Sadler and Greg Biffle," Busch said. "It was really neat to race with those guys -- and my teammate Jimmie Johnson -- and they all gave me great room. We all had fun. We all had a blast."
Biffle won the race easily. Biffle's car was so powerful that the last 100 laps were uneventful, but Martin said he liked the dynamic of the race.
Biffle, his Roush Racing teammate, made adjustments to move to the front.
In other words, Biffle did not have to knock anyone out of his way. The best man won, Martin said.
"It doesn't always work out that way when you have 15 or 20 cautions," Martin said.
Including the Coca-Cola 600 on May 29, which was cluttered with a record 22 cautions, there have been seven races this year with at least 10 cautions. At this point last season, there were only four races with more than 10, and none with more than 11.
Martin has shown that a driver helps himself if he keeps the nose of his car out of trouble. He has finished all but one race, and he has four top-five finishes. He is in a clump of nine drivers between 300 and 400 points behind Johnson, the series leader.
"The senior guys, the mature drivers, they understand the jeopardy that's at every place, not just at Dover," Jack Roush said.
The series moves on to a race at Pocono Raceway on Sunday. Pocono is a two-and-a-half-mile tri-oval in which traffic will not be packed as tightly as it was Sunday at Dover, a one-mile, high-banked, car-punishing concrete oval.
But the gaps between drivers in the standings seem to be shrinking. Twelve drivers are within 400 points of Johnson, and five more are within 130 points of the 13th-place driver, Jamie McMurray.
It sounds as if the drivers have not heard the last of Martin yet - and in more ways than one.
"I'm not even going to use the age thing, but I'm just saying there's not that many newcomers who really get the hang of how they run these races," Martin said. "So they fight tooth and nail, and they won't let people get by them. So you have to overextend yourself, and there's the wreck."
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