Shifting Gears

Mark Martin thought about retiring from the weekly pounding of Nextel Cup racing a couple of years ago, but felt humiliated when he ran the final 22 races in 2003 without finishing once in the top 10. It was his worst year since he’d joined team owner Jack Roush in 1988 and the feisty man from Arkansas decided he had to keep going.

“The bottom line is, I’m 46 years old and my greatest fear in motorsports is going out on decline,” he said. “It’s much more important for me to exit with great respect than it is in great decline. I boosted my self-esteem a lot last year and I think I can let go of it with a great 2005.”

Martin, perhaps NASCAR’s finest driver never to win a Cup championship, is part of a generational shift in the series’ highest ranks. Joining him in making this his last season in Nextel Cup are Rusty Wallace, NASCAR champion in 1989, and two-time champion Terry Labonte, who is on a limited schedule. Bill Elliott, the 1988 champion, cut his schedule last year. Versatile and venerable Ken Schrader says 2006 will be his last.

Those five have accounted for more than 150 years of racing at stock car’s highest level. All will be at Fontana this week for the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway.

None is giving up racing, though. What they are giving up is the week-after-week grind of Nextel Cup racing, the off-track obligations that have increased a hundred-fold since they joined the NASCAR family 30 years ago.

“When I first started NASCAR cup racing, it was 29 races,” Martin said. “Now it’s 38. And there wasn’t near as much going on away from the track. Now it’s grown to the point where in order to be at the top of your game, you have to give it every minute. Of course, when you’re 25 it’s no big deal, it’s exciting. Things change when you get to 45 or so. I’ve been racing 30 years, I’ve been married 20 years, I have made every compromise and sacrifice possible to enhance my career.

“Folks say I’m smiling a little more and that’s because I can see the weight lifting and I can see the end of the tunnel. For so long, I knew I was buried and could never see the end and now I see it. I really need to be out from under the pressures and the grind and I need to reclaim a piece of my life back for my family.”

Not until this year is over, however. Martin insists that he will retain the intensity through 2005 that has been his hallmark all these years, a fierce work ethic born out of his hardscrabble life as a youngster growing up in Batesville, Ark.

“That new chapter in my life won’t begin until after this year,” he said. “This year is all about work. It is going to be the hardest, most demanding year of my life and my family is signed up for all the sacrifices and my race team is signed up for it. Everybody stayed in place, Pat Tryson my crew chief, all my guys, in order to give me a shot at the championship and leaving on a high note. Like I said, it’s very important to be at the top of my game when I leave.”

Martin got off to a successful start with a sixth-place finish in Sunday’s Daytona 500 and a victory in the International Race of Champions on Friday. During the 500, he ran as high as third late in the race and said, “It’s a better start than 43rd last year. This is a good car and could’ve had a chance to maybe do a little better, but I sure could’ve done a lot worse.”

In his 33-year career, Martin has won 34 races, including one in 1995 at California Speedway, the inaugural race at Las Vegas in 1998 and four times at Charlotte. He has never won the Daytona 500 or a Nextel or Winston Cup championship. He has been runner-up four times for the series crown, but don’t ask him if he is disappointed at coming so close but never winning.

“Winning one would have been fine, but how can you think I am disappointed,” he said. “I consider it quite an accomplishment to have been second four times.

“Dale Earnhardt only beat me by 29 points [in 1990] and the other guys that beat me, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, are pretty darn good drivers, so why would I be disappointed? I feel like I had some good years.”

Martin emphasizes he is not finished with racing, only with Nextel Cup racing.

“I’m not just going to quit racing cold turkey,” he said. “I’m going to do the Craftsman truck series and if that doesn’t work, I’m going to grab me a bunch of race cars in my son’s race shop and I’m going to travel around the country and race short tracks and sign autographs and do what I love.”

Martin’s son Matt is 13 and heavily involved in quarter-midget racing around Daytona Beach, where the family of Mark, Arlene and five children lives.

“I’ll go racing with him if that’s what he wants, but I can’t make any decisions about what I do with my life based on his racing,” Martin said. “That would be a huge mistake. But, I will say that starting next year, I’ll have a whole lot more time to be with him than I do now.”

Wallace announced in August that this would be his last year in Nextel Cup and after waffling a bit about his decision, said after Daytona that he was sure he’d made the right decision. However, it won’t surprise anyone, except maybe his wife, Patti, if he is back some day.

“This retirement thing is going around in my head all the time,” he said. “I guess the toughest thing I’ll have to give up is the pure enjoyment of racing. I love racing and I feel like I’m at the top of my game right now, but that 38-race schedule will wear a person down. There’s a lot of life out there, rather than living in a motor home every weekend at a racetrack.”

Still, he probably will be around as a car owner. He already has a Busch team, with Jamie McMurray and Jeremy Mayfield each driving 17 races.

Wallace went 106 races between victories before collecting one on the short track at Martinsville in October. It was his 55th win in 21 years, eighth on the all-time list. His 662 consecutive starts, from Daytona 1984 to Daytona on Sunday, rank second only to Ricky Rudd’s 753.

“I put on a good performance at Daytona and I was in the lead pack most of the day,” he said. “I really thought I was going to finish a lot better than 10th. Now we’ll just have to get out to California and win one. I had a car good enough to win. Now we’ve got to do it.”

Elliott started the retirement trend with a partial schedule last year, running only six races. This year he plans to run about the same number, beginning Sunday. He got a surprise tuneup when Chip Ganassi lent him a car to drive in the Budweiser Shootout, but this week he will be back in one of Evernham Motorsports’ Dodge Chargers.

“I think I like where I’m at real well right now,” he said. “All good things have got to come to an end. After running as long as I have in this sport and given as much as I have, it’s time to go around and enjoy life. I feel like I could probably race several more years, but you look at it and say, why put yourself through it each and every week.

“I think the biggest thing when I walked away [from a full season] is being able to drop the pressure of competing each and every week on a have-to basis because that’s the hardest part of this sport.”

Elliott, “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville,” has had a remarkable career. He has won 44 times, has won the Daytona 500 twice and was voted NASCAR’s most popular driver 16 times. The award has since been named in his honor, the Bill Elliott Trophy.

“Fontana will be our first race in the Stanley Tools Charger and I think we’ve got the tools to run up front,” he said. “I’ve been up and down at California in the past. But the new Charger has the right balance of down force and handling for this kind of racetrack.

“I enjoy the facility out there. It’s a lot like Michigan and I like Michigan really well, but it seems like I haven’t been able to apply Michigan to California too well. It just seems like it takes something a little bit different than what we’ve learned at Michigan, and now maybe we’ve got what it takes.”

Elliott and Schrader are 49, Labonte and Wallace 48 and Martin 46. Will the next wave last this long? Most think not.

“The demands are so great now, and the drivers are starting so much younger, that there is no way the young drivers today will race past their 40s,” Martin said. “When we started, you had to prove yourself and get experience before they’d let you in a good car. Now, since Jeff Gordon showed it was a good idea, they’re bringing some of them in when they’re still teenagers.”

Gordon is 33, sort of the elder statesman of the younger generation.

“I get asked a lot if I think I’ll be around at 40 and you know, I don’t think about it unless I get asked,” he said. “I know one thing, there is no shortage of things I would like to do that have nothing to do with racing. I want to go to Africa and experience a safari, but you’ve got to have 10 days and we don’t have 10 days. It’s things like that and a lot more.

“Racing has given me the opportunity to do all these things and so I don’t want to step away because I love it. I still love getting behind the wheel of a car and racing.”

Tony Stewart, 33, knows it’s coming for him someday.

“It’s evolution,” he said. “There will be a time when I go away and Jeff Gordon and Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. go away. It’s just part of the sport. It’s odd because it comes in waves. You hate to lose three great drivers this year. That’s going to be a pretty big change, a sad day for the fans.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

OLD SCHOOL

Mark Martin

Birth date: Jan. 9, 1959

Cup wins: 34

Car: Ford

Highlights: Four-time runner-up for NASCAR championship. Fourth in 2004 Chase for Cup.

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Bill Elliott

Birth date: Oct. 8, 1955

Cup wins: 44

Car: Dodge

Highlights: Won 2002 Brickyard 400 and 1985 and ’87 Daytona 500.

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Rusty Wallace

Birth date: Aug. 14, 1956

Cup wins: 55

Car: Dodge

Highlights: 1989 NASCAR champion. 1984 rookie of the year.

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Terry Labonte

Birth date: Nov. 16, 1956

Cup wins: 22

Car: Chevrolet

Highlights: NASCAR champion in 1984 and 1996. Won 2003 Southern 500.

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Ken Schrader

Birth date: May 29, 1955

Cup wins: 4

Car: Dodge

Highlights: Rookie of the year in 1985; three-time Daytona pole-sitter.

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Modern-Era Records

NASCAR leaders in the modern era (since 1972), with drivers who will be retiring soon in bold (statistics through Sunday’s Daytona 500):

VICTORIES

*--* 1. Darrell Waltrip 84 2. Dale Earnhardt 76 3. Jeff Gordon 70 4. Cale Yarborough 69 5. Richard Petty 60 6. Bobby Allison 55 6. Rusty Wallace 55 8. David Pearson 45 9. Bill Elliott 44 10. Mark Martin 34 11. Dale Jarrett 31 12. Ricky Rudd 23 13. Terry Labonte 22 14. Bobby Labonte 21 15. Benny Parsons 20 16. Davey Allison 19 17. Harry Gant 18 17. Neil Bonnett 18 17. Geoff Bodine 18 20. Tony Stewart 17 20. Jeff Burton 17 POLES 1. Darrell Waltrip 59 2. David Pearson 56 3. Bill Elliott 55 4. Cale Yarborough 51 5. Jeff Gordon 46 6. Mark Martin 41 7. Geoff Bodine 37 8. Rusty Wallace 36 9. Bobby Allison 35 10. Buddy Baker 30 11. Ricky Rudd 29 12. Terry Labonte 27 12. Ryan Newman 27 14. Bobby Lanbonte 25 15. Alan Kulwicki 24 16. Ken Schrader 23 16. Richard Petty 23 18. Ernie Irvan 22 18. Dale Earnhardt 22 20. Neil Bonnett 21

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