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NASCAR

Mark Martin doesn't want to think back to 2007 finish at Daytona

By SceneDaily.com

Feb 11, 2009

Mark Martin is trying to stay focused on his car and on the task at hand – winning Sunday’s 2009 Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race – and prefers not to think about the 2007 Daytona 500 that he lost by inches to Kevin Harvick and all of the other questions swirling around him this season.

The 50-year-old native of Batesville, Ark., is trying to take things one step at a time without getting "all giddy" about how the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. He qualified on the outside of the front row for Sunday’s race and says it might be the best car he's ever had at Daytona, a track where he has never won.

But the questions keep coming, the reminders about that 2007 race and questions about whether this is his best shot to win a championship, about why he decided to return to full-time Cup competition this year after leaving that role in 2006 for two partial seasons with Ginn Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Now Martin has moved to Hendrick Motorsports with plans to run one more full-time season. So, again, the questions come.

Martin answers patiently, trying to find a way to work those questions back to the fact at hand and to talk about things that he’s excited about, such as the chance to work with his new crew chief.

"I had no idea how incredibly bright Alan Gustafson was until I had a chance to go testing with him a few times -- absolutely undiscovered by the media,” Martin says. “He has not been discovered yet.”

Only when pressed will he admit that he does think about that 2007 race from time to time and what it might have been like if he had been inches ahead of Harvick, instead of inches behind, and thus declared the winner of the sport’s biggest race when a caution flag brought the race to an end short of the finish line.

"Yes, it does cross my mind every once in a while, but I try to keep that at bay because really that - to me it is silly for me to think about that,” Martin said. “What’s smart is to think about how do I make the most out of this opportunity? How do we get our car good? What are the things that I can do to make the most out of it instead of getting all giddy about this might be the best car I ever had at Daytona?"

Martin, who has finished as the series runnerup four times, says he wasn’t thinking about a championship when he took this ride, just how solid the Hendrick organization is and how strong his effort with it could be. Martin has been around long enough that he doesn't think 36 races down the road anymore. While he must realize the potential, he's not buying into championship talk.

He's just thinking about Daytona. Martin was pleased with the qualifying effort, pointing out that he qualifies there often.

“I’m just Mr. Outside Pole - if I’m not mistaken I sat on the outside pole six times last year and didn’t get one [pole], so I’ll take that because I have sat on the back pole a few times in my career, and I don’t like that at all," he said. "I’ll take second. This is my first time - I don’t know how many Daytona 500s I’ve done, but I think its 25, that’s a good, close number anyway or in the ballpark. I’ve never been on the front row.

"It seems like, my memory may serve me different, but it seems like in time trials it was a very rare occasion when I had a top-10 in [a] time-trials car. My guys always told me after time trials were over with that I would race good and ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I always said I would race better if that thing was fast. We’ve got a fast race car - I’m really excited.”

Martin did have six outside poles in points races last season, plus drawing one in the non-points Budweiser Shootout. He did not earn a pole position in 2008, but has 41 pole positions in 722 Cup starts to go with his 35 wins, 243 top-five and 396 top-10 finishes.

Martin has never won at Daytona, but he admits things already feel different on this trip. First, he wasn't in Saturday night’s Budweiser Shootout, so he says that he felt as if he was "spotting our competition, and, boy, I don’t like doing that."

Martin says that missing that race, and the chance to draft at the track, has left him feeling as if his team has lost a step to the competition entering Wednesday's practice sessions when the teams will begin drafting. Only the 28 drivers who were in the Shootout have drafted on the track to date this year.

"It probably won’t make a hill-of-beans difference; after 15 minutes on the race track, we’ll probably be read to go," Martin said. "But I still [feel], right now, we are behind. After 15 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour or whatever, we may not be behind anymore, but right now we are, and it takes a lot of pressure off of Thursday [when the Gatorade Duels are run]. We can go out there, and I feel a lot more comfortable about going for the win.”

For now, though, Martin is just enjoying the process - and being at Daytona and starting on the outside pole.

"For me, this is just the start," Martin said. "This is just the first competition that we’ve had - just the first one of the year, and already it’s turned out really sweet. I hope that we can continue to have some really bright days together.”