Sliding out the window of his No. 6 Ford, Mark Martin is about to make his escape. He wades through an infield clogged with humanity and machinery at the Kansas Speedway, answering a few obligatory questions about his top-10 finish in the Banquet 400—How many is it now, 372?—as he beelines for a Bell 407 chopper and a lift out of the track. It's time for his second race of the day, the one that takes him home.
Once delivered to the airport, Martin ditches the heli to pilot his personal jet. Up and away just a half hour after the checkered flag, his twin-engine Cessna Citation hits 600 mph on the way to Spruce Creek, his fly-in Florida neighborhood south of Daytona. (You know it as that aero-burb pimped by John Travolta on MTV Cribs.) In less than two hours, Martin lands, drives his jet down the street and parks it at his house as if it were a station wagon, pulling up alongside a fleet of Roush Performance altered street vehicles and a growing stable of race cars that belong to his teenage son, Matt.
You'd think that a man in such a hurry to get home, a man who has this whole commuting thing down to a science, could also figure out how to leave his racing career behind.
Not quite.
FIVE HUNDRED miles to the north of Martin's home sits his office, the Concord, N.C., headquarters of Roush Racing. There, no fewer than 100 Nextel Cup cars sit at the ready. Martin's name is painted on a fifth of the fleet, but after 19 seasons of racing for a team he literally helped build with his own two hands, he could point to any one of those cars and it would be his for the next race.
"It's always about the next ride," the 47-year-old Martin says. "I'm always on the move, usually to another way to be on the move. That's how you end up with all these vehicles."
Truth be told, the ride he wants most is the one he can't have: a hot rod that would hand him the chance to keep racing just long enough to finally win the Daytona 500, or to take home one of those Cup titles, or simply to race side by side with his boy.
What the man wants is a time machine.
"Look at this face," Martin says. His craggy mug was once described by former driver Lake Speed as the fastest facial fossil in the world. "How do you think I got this old face? I've got a line here for every lap I've run, every race I should have won and didn't."
Yep, a time machine. Maybe then Martin wouldn't keep holding farewell tours. Maybe then his critics wouldn't roll their eyes, joking that he's said more good-byes than the Rolling Stones. Of course, those are the outsiders. The select few truly close to the driver aren't surprised by his annual autumn double clutch—they expect it. They know that the last person to realize Mark Martin isn't ever actually going to quit will be Mark Martin.
"I guess it looks that way, huh?" he says. The admission comes with the closest expression to a laugh that he seems able to muster, a tight-lipped, what-are-you-getting-at grin. He knows. There was
Martin holds on to pieces of the past,
like his first ride, a '55 Chevy Bel Air. the emotional announcement three Octobers ago, when he explained how 2005 would be his final year, the "Mark Martin's Salute to You" tour, held in lockstep with old pal Rusty Wallace. "It would really take something out of leftfield to bring me back," Martin said that day. But then teammate Kurt Busch wriggled out of his contract in late October, just weeks before Martin's alleged final race. And that left boss Jack Roush with a need to fill an empty ride. He asked Martin to hang around one more season, so the retirement tour was given its first one-year reprieve.
What followed the next two seasons were improbable runs at the title. Martin's surge late this summer made him the oldest man in the Chase for the Nextel Cup by eight years. By July, adamant February assurances that "This is it" had deteriorated into talk of "Okay, I'll run a few races next year." By October, the erosion was complete, as Martin revealed that he would run 22 Cup events next season for middle-of-the-pack MB2 Motorsports. And, oh yeah, he hasn't ruled out returning full-time in 2008.
"I haven't really done anything else since I was a kid," Martin says. "This is what I do, not just for a job. This is it. Everything. Living without the pressure sounds great, but on the other hand, it scares the hell out of me."
Damn right the man needs a time machine. Then he could take us back and show us all the moments behind his excuses to keep on racing. Back to when he was a husky 14-year-old in 1973, to one of those late nights on the road with his father, Julian, towing their wrecked race car back to Batesville, Ark., from some nasty little Midwestern dirt track.
Back to 1977, when his pit crew had to wake him up, dust him off and push him out of the truck and into his high school in time for history class. Or perhaps back to the hard-living days—and nights—of 1983, to see the bags under his eyes and hear about the potholes in his liver, when he was a broken-down kid who'd nearly killed himself trying to win the Winston Cup Rookie of the Year.
And it would be nice to take everyone back to Victory Lane, any Victory Lane. Let them see why he gutted out all the hard times; see his joy reflected in a brand-new trophy; see what it feels like to win a race …or 35.
"Pain is part of the deal," says Martin, who once raced with a back so cracked (three fractured vertebrae) that he had to be hoisted into the air and shoehorned into the cockpit by his crew. "The pain of failure, worrying about failing again. Even when you get that relief, the kind that comes from winning, you worry that you might not ever get to feel it again."
It is pure obsession, a hole that can't be filled by alcohol and fast food or clean living and free weights. Trust him, he's tried them all. Nothing works except those precious few moments standing with that trophy in hand.
TO UNDERSTAND Mark Martin's mentality, you must first understand that he is a racer. Not a driver—a racer. The majority of Cup racers, especially the old guard, have only hobbies that include some sort of internal combustion chamber. If they play video games, they play racing games. If they watch TV, they watch other races. What else is worth their time?
Richard Petty still apologizes to fans for hanging on too long, for failing to win even once over his final eight seasons. Mario Andretti was practicing to run Indianapolis in 2003, at the age of 63, before a rooftop ride at 230 mph changed his mind. As sad a sight as it was to see The King struggling and Mario on his lid, their motives were just as honorable. "I am probably guilty of overusing the word passion," Andretti says. "But that's what it is for Mark, or any one of us. We've built cars, wrecked them, spent every nickel we had. We made everything, even family, secondary to racing. You want us to just shut it down? You snuff out a racer's passion, you snuff out his life."
But as age creeps in, it leaves little room for hammer-down fearlessness. A couple of kids at home will lighten a driver's right foot and test his willingness to take the hard hits. "There is more to think about as you get older," Martin admits. "A wife, a kid, stepkids, employees, all of the people who depend on you. When you're younger, none of that comes into your mind. Now they do. They don't slow me down; they make me race smarter, hesitate when I need to.
"You can slow down, but it's how you go about it," he continues. "Rusty Wallace didn't want to be out here if he wasn't racing all the time and running for the championship. That used to be the norm, but now there are opportunities that didn't exist just a few years ago."
Sponsors and teams are now willing to create part-time, slow-down plans for the biggest stars, like Martin's deal in which he shares a ride with rookie Regan Smith. These gigs give teams a guy with experience (which can also mean some guaranteed starting spots), and drivers get the chance to transition into a NASCAR afterlife. Bill Elliott became a part-timer in 2004 and has since run 23 Cup races with five teams. Terry Labonte's "shifting gears Texas-style" plan included 31 races with three different organizations over two years. Elliott loves the slow-down plan. Labonte hated it.
"I think maybe Mark will have better success than I did, because his team is running full-time," Labonte says. "But who knows? If he ends up back in the pack like I was, it'll drive him crazy. I will say this, though: The money's good."
Martin may have the best-paying moonlighting job in America next year: a one-year deal estimated to be worth $11 million, or $500K per start. But will it be enough to stomach driving for MB2, a team that's won only two races in nearly 600 tries? The mere mention of such futile numbers sharpens Martin's jawline. Someone's questioning his motivation again.
"If I didn't feel confident about where I was headed, do you think I would go there?" he says.
"Do you really think that after 30 years, I would put myself in a position to be embarrassed? I know it was a shock that I would leave Roush. When I visited MB2 and talked with [new team owner and resort magnate] Bobby Ginn, I got excited about building something again. Like I did with Dad, like I did with Jack." It's a chance to create something meaningful, to take his knowledge to MB2 and help turn it into the next Roush Racing.
At home, Martin will keep building race cars for his son and coaching him around the track. If it goes the way he imagines, Mark's car will become competitive as Matt's moves up the NASCAR ladder, with a Cup debut in 2010.
Maybe Mark Martin will be retired by then, maybe he won't. Don't bother asking about it, because he'll tell you there's no way to know. "I don't see myself running Cup races when I'm fiftysomething," he says. Then he sighs and tightens his jaw again, and you'd swear that another one of those wrinkles just entrenched itself. "But I don't know that for sure." The man needs a time machine all right. But until somebody invents one, he'll just do what he's always done: dig in his heels, stare down the clock and race the SOB.