Martin on Other Side of Fence : Auto racing: It was once his dream to drive in the Daytona 500. Now he’s considered one of the favorites to win it.

Four years ago, Mark Martin was at Daytona International Speedway, peering through a chain-link fence at Winston Cup drivers and the colorful stock cars they drive on NASCAR’s high-banked speedways.

“I knew I could drive one, if I could just get the chance, but I really never thought the opportunity would come,” Martin said Monday as his car owner, Jack Roush, tinkered with the Ford that Martin will drive Sunday in the Daytona 500.

Martin is not only entered in the 500, he is one of the favorites after winning six pole positions and a race at Rockingham, N.C., last year and finishing second six times. He finished third behind Rusty Wallace and Dale Earnhardt in the season-long Winston Cup standings.

“Some people may consider me one of the favorites, but to me, I’m still just the hillbilly kid from Arkansas who was outside that fence a few years ago,” said Martin. “The only thing that changed is that I was lucky enough to have someone believe I belonged on the other side of the fence.”

Martin, 31, started his career at 15, driving a six-cylinder, ’55 Chevy that his father had built. He raced it in the hobby class on quarter-mile dirt tracks near his home in Batesville, Ark.

When he was 18, he told his father, “There’s no Daytona 500 on dirt,” and began racing cars on asphalt in the American Speed Assn. In 1977 he was named rookie of the year and the next three years won the ASA championship.

His success earned him a shot at Winston Cup racing in 1981, but the financial burden of losing his sponsor and trying to run his own under-financed team sent him packing back to the ASA.

“I left Winston Cup racing at the end of the ’82 season a broken man,” Martin said. “I was broke--emotionally, physically and financially.”

Surprisingly, Martin said that his failure to make it in his first attempt turned out to be a blessing.

“Those days were difficult, as difficult as I could imagine, but I’ll never, ever forget that day, looking through the fence and saying to myself, ‘I know I can do it, but I’ll probably never get the chance.’ ” said Martin. “I had been sleeping in a truck, heading up and down the road, working 18-20 hours a day. And still not making it.”

Martin returned to his roots, driving in the ASA and winning the championship again in 1986. That caught the eye of Bruce Lawmaster, who hired him to drive his Ford in the 1987 Busch Grand National season. He won six poles and three races and attracted the attention of Roush, a highly successful builder of Ford Racing cars in Livonia, Mich., who was starting his own Winston Cup team.

“Having been down as deep as I was, it makes everything that’s happened to me that much more enjoyable,” Martin said. “Four years ago, it was like I was in freezing cold, locked outside and nobody’d let me in.

“There was a time exactly three years ago that I broke out in hives from my forehead to my toes from nerves and working from dawn to dark, seven days a week, trying to get a Busch Grand National car ready to come down here. Now that’s hard. I’m not saying it’s really easy now, because racing is never easy. But I certainly haven’t broken out in hives lately.

“Then, all of a sudden, I’m with Roush, we win a race and finish up high most of the time, and the door opens and I climb on to NASCAR’s private jet with (NASCAR president) Bill France Jr., and have a private conversation with him, and then I get picked up in a limo by (NASCAR vice president) Les Richter and get whisked away to receive the National Motorsports Press Assn. driver-of-the-year award. The transition is just unbelievable.”

Through it all, Martin has remained probably the most humble and unassuming driver on the grounds.

Last year, in the July race at Daytona, Martin was leading when he ran out of fuel with only a few laps remaining. The miscalculation cost the team more than $200,000 in prize and bonus money.

“You will never meet another person who yesterday is over for, more than it is with me,” he said. “It’s been that way from the beginning. When I was in ASA, every terrible day and every win was over by the next morning.

“Last July can’t be thought of--or considered.”

Nor does Martin set goals for himself or his team.

“I’m not a defined goal-setter like people seem to wish I was,” he said. “I assume most athletes in other fields set a lot of personal goals, because sportswriters seem to think I should have those kinds of goals.

“I never have. My goal is the same was it always was--to try to win every single race. If we set a goal, and we don’t make it by year’s end, people could make us feel that we didn’t have as good a year as we felt we had. We don’t want someone else to make us feel like we’re not doing well.

“I’m hard enough on myself. Riding our own tails is about all we can stand.”