BRISTOL, Tenn. — The legends of Bristol Motor Speedway came together for a 35-lap charity race around the Tennessee bullring. As a two-time track winner, Mark Martin was certainly qualified to join the action.
Actually, he’s probably overqualified.
Rusty Wallace and Jimmy Spencer, recent NASCAR retirees, both signed up for the chance to mix it up Saturday with old-timers Harry Gant, Junior Johnson and Jack Ingram. And even though partially retired driver Sterling Marlin is driving in both the charity event and the Sprint Cup Series race Sunday, Martin wasn’t interested in a similar double-duty.
At 50 years old, Martin is certainly eligible for a career in exhibition races. But that would be assuming Martin was past his prime, which clearly isn’t true.
He again proved his skill rivals that of drivers half his age by winning the pole for Sunday’s race. It will be the second consecutive race Martin starts from the top spot, marking the first time in 20 years he’s pulled off back-to-back pole-winning runs.
“It’s such a pleasure to drive that car,” Martin said of his Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet. “They’re hitting the race track with great, great setups based on learning about what I like in the race car. We’ve got a great race team.”
He just needs a chance to prove it in the results column.
Martin has had a terrible start to his first season with Hendrick, losing two motors and cutting a tire to plummet to 34th in the standings. It’s an unbelievable string of bad breaks, but fast cars help the pessimistic driver look forward to brighter days.
“It’s no secret that we have not had the best of luck this year, and it’s really nice to come back this week and display speed once again,” he said. “We’ve got speed and the other part is going to turn around sooner or later, the luck part.”
It better. If Martin slips any further in the standings, he’ll fall outside the top-35 mark that guarantees him a spot in the starting field next week at Martinsville Speedway. All drivers outside the top 35 must make the race on speed, and the slightest bobble during a qualifying run would send one of NASCAR’s biggest stars home.
His competitors aren’t exactly sending sympathy cards.
“I’m not going to feel for Mark just yet,” Carl Edwards said. “He’s too fast. I firmly believe he’ll be in the top 12. I don’t know how far out he is, but that guy could run in the top three for the next 20 weeks and it wouldn’t surprise me. If they can just have a little bit of luck, I think they’ll be fine.”
For the record, Martin is just 189 points out of 12th place — the final qualifying spot for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, proved Martin can close that margin over the next 22 weeks: Johnson made up 165 points over five races during his 2007 title run.
Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon is confident his teammate will turn it around, and stresses how well Martin was running before his mechanical failures sabotaged solid finishes. Martin had a top-10 car at California before his motor failed, and was running fourth when he cut a tire two weeks ago in Atlanta.
“All of us have been very supportive with him to try keeping him and the team positive because they have been running so good, and you feel bad for them because they have been capable of putting some great finishes up there,” Gordon said. “I think they all have a lot of high expectations on them. You have the No. 5 team, Hendrick Motorsports and Mark Martin. Everybody believes that is a great combination and it is, they just haven’t been able to have the results at the end of the day to show for it.
“But they will come, they will.”
Martin used the off week to get over the disappointment of his first month of the season, unwinding with his family and getting past feeling “a little bit nauseous.” But given time to look at the big picture, he knows crew chief Alan Gustafson has built him strong cars and he has a solid chance at racing for the win Sunday.
“We’re going to keep pounding until we get some great, great results,” he said.
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