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Sunday, February 18, 2007
Martin’s moment denied
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Daytona Beach, Fla. — He was supposed to have retired two years ago, but here was the grizzled American racer, about to win the Great American Race for the first time in a life that has spanned 48 years. With one turn to go, Mark Martin led the Daytona 500.
A wreckless race for 153 laps had gone all squirrelly near the end, cars careening and caution flags flying, and the upshot was that Daytona was about to be taken by a part-time driver on his 23rd try. Martin will work a half-schedule for his new employer, Ginn Racing, and how would the cutthroat world of NASCAR — Cheaters ‘R’ Us — react if a semi-retiree won its grandest race?
One turn to go, history at hand. Martin managed to fend off Kyle Busch for the first lap and three-quarters of the green-white-checkered finish, and Busch looked to have the fastest car still running. But then, just as AARP card-holders were about to lift their weary arms in exultation, here came another car screaming around the top of the banked track.
Here came Kevin Harvick, who’d started the last lap in sixth place. Harvick nosed ahead of Martin. Martin nosed back. Behind them, cars began banging and spinning yet again. (Clint Bowyer crossed the finish line on his roof.) Would the caution light wink before Martin and Harvick flashed across the line? Would Martin be declared the winner on a technicality?
“I have no idea what happened behind me,” Martin would say. “From what my spotter said, I was ahead when they started wrecking.”
Then: “Nobody wants to see a grown man cry, and I’m not going to cry about it. [NASCAR] made their decision, and we’re going to live with it.”
NASCAR’s decision: Harvick was the winner. Just how, NASCAR wasn’t quite sure. At first it was believed Harvick had won because he took the checkered flag two-hundredths of a second ahead of Martin. Then, an hour and 50 minutes after the race ended, came this announcement: “When the 07 car [Bowyer] went sideways … the 29 [Harvick] was ahead of the 01 [Martin] and was declared the winner.”
Then, 10 minutes later, came further “clarification”: “The race ended under green.”
So which was it: Green or yellow? Checkered flag or caution light? After such a confused week, you expected clarity? From NASCAR?
As best as anyone could discern, Harvick won by some means, which meant Martin lost, which meant the best possible story of the worst possible week got shredded at the end. Said Harvick: “I knew when I got out of the car, I wasn’t going to be the good guy.”
Said Martin: “I didn’t ask for a win in the Daytona 500. I asked for a chance. I let it get away, and I’m fine with that.”
He’d walked away from Roush Racing after last season — a full year after he was supposed to have walked away from racing, but he delayed his announced retirement — and found new and unexpected semi-employment. He has a new car (a Chevy, as opposed to a Ford) and a new number (01, as opposed to the familiar 6) and a new sponsor (the U.S. Army, as opposed to Viagra). He has never liked restrictor-plate racing, and yet with his new arrangement he came as close to winning Daytona as he ever had. Or ever will.
“I don’t care if Mark Martin wins a championship; he’s a champion,” said Jeff Burton, the third-place finisher. “I don’t care if he ever wins the Daytona 500; he’s a champion. … He’s a world-class individual.”
Someone asked Martin, a runner-up in what would have been the crowning race of a distinguished career, how he’d have felt if Harvick had eased up on the gas and let him win. “No one ever races less,” Martin said. “If that had been the case, it would’ve broken me in half.”
He tried to win and wound up losing. He’s fine with that. But you’ll pardon the NASCAR audience if it feels a bit deflated. After a week of cheating, the improbable sight of Mark Martin in victory lane would have been finer than fine. It would have been a godsend.
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From humble beginnings to this
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
So NASCAR marches on. What you watched on television from Daytona Beach on Sunday afternoon was about as far removed from the first official NASCAR race as a space ship is from the covered wagon. It was June 19, 1949. Bill France and his partner Alvin Hawkins had come to Charlotte to put on their first race. You will read in the NASCAR press guide that it was run at the local fairgrounds track. It wasn’t.
They bulldozed a track out of the red clay off Wilkinson Boulevard and called it Charlotte Speedway. They already had the name, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, a geographical designation questioned by a local sports editor, who said, “How can you call it national when you’re not even out of Mecklenberg County?”
“You’ll see,” France said, “you’ll see.”
If there was ever another race run on that track, I can’t recall it, but the first NASCAR race was. Memory thwarts me when I try to remember how many people saw that race. I can’t recall, but I question the record book again when it enthusiastically described the crowd as “tremendous.” Those wooden bleachers would hardly have accommodated a crowd of “tremendous” capacity, all of whom went home wearing a coat of red dust and resin from the raw bleachers on their bottoms.
There were no motor coaches, no cameras, even from the local newspapers, no sexpots (bathing beauties in those days) strutting their stuff, no rock bands, in fact, no bands, but lots of red dust. Everybody spoke English, or a mountain version of it, no Spanish or Japanese as Sunday at Daytona. To enter the race, a fellow simply drove up in his car and plunked down a fee and he raced. At least that’s what Lee Petty, sire of the Level Cross, N.C., clan said.
I’ve also read that Richard Petty, who would have been 11 years old, was there with his papa. Lee said, “I took the family car and a couple of buddies of mine, and we drove over and entered the race.” His car never finished, but came to rest on a hillock above a turn, and Lee opened the door and sat there in a despondent pose. (No crawling through the window then.)
When I later asked him what he was thinking, he said, “I was wondering what I was going to tell my wife where I’d been with that car.”
The race was a sort of trend-setter for NASCAR, right down to this week at Daytona. Glenn Dunaway, a local fellow, finished first, but he was disqualified when something strange was found under the hood. (Sound familiar?) The official winner, then, was the guy who finished second, Jim Roper from Kansas. He never won another NASCAR race.
Pits crews were not certified mechanics, or tire-changers, if indeed, they changed tires, or if they had pits. Organization was not one of the freshly minted NASCAR’s features. In another way it was ahead of its time. There was a woman driver in the field, and Sara Christian finished 14th. Television would have made a big noise about her, but television was barely out of the crib.
Sunday you sat and watched the Daytona 500, utterly amazed at how far stock car racing has come. This, not the Indianapolis 500, in the Super Bowl of auto racing. The big race at the old Speedway now is a stock car race, The Brickyard 400. From that dusty half-mile dirt bowl on Wilkinson Boulevard in Charlotte to King of the Hill. From a few thousand spectators who didn’t mind a nose full of dust to fans as far as you could see at Daytona, thousands and thousands who won’t be out of the parking lot until dawn; racing teams operating out of motorized machine shops that will hit the road at full speed. You see, next Sunday they race in California. Whoever on Wilkinson Boulevard in 1949 ever woulda thunk it?
As this one ended, I’ll confess. I was pulling for Mark Martin. The old man. He would have been a perfect fit for that field in the first NASCAR race in 1949.
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