1,000 Greatest Drivers: Mark Martin

On the Mark.

Back in the days before people realized the Internet would ultimately be arguably a bad thing for humanity, AOL had trivia games on various subjects where AOL users could compete with each other on various multiple-choice quizzes and I remember playing their NASCAR trivia games pretty often circa 1999 and 2000. Almost all their quizzes allowed you to score more points the sooner you rang in, but would offer you hints when there were only a few seconds left, which were always stupid puns. For some reason, I remember that the pun whenever Mark Martin was the answer was always “On the Mark”. I remember nothing else about this game.

I was a bandwagon jumper as a NASCAR fan back in the day. Dale Earnhardt was my first favorite from 1994-97 probably until I grew to understand his aggressive image, so then I went in the polar opposite direction and rooted for Martin from 1997-99. Then I rooted for Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman very briefly when they were rookies and I’m not really a fan of any of them anymore, but I don’t really regret my bandwagon-jumping because it allowed me to be able to evaluate races and drivers from a variety of perspectives better than I think a lot of young fans could have because I went through drivers so often, it was never “my driver right or wrong” for me, and I think that helped me develop a more accurate perspective. When Martin was my favorite driver, my dad bought me the book Mark Martin: Driven to Race by Bob Zeller and I still have it and own it and have practically memorized parts of it, so I could’ve written this pretty much in my sleep. There were so many things I tried to squeeze in here from that book, and I think I did an adequate job of covering them all, but some of the things I wasn’t able to include within my 500-word limit:

Martin once boasted in the ‘70s (before he had even won any of his ASA titles), “I want to win the Daytona 500. . . and win it long before I’m twenty-five”.

He might’ve actually been able to do that since after his hot pre-rookie season in 1981, Waddell Wilson actually offered him the #28 Harry Ranier ride in 1982 and he was so stubborn he turned it down to remain with his family operation (which was technically owned by Bud Reeder but effectively run by the Martin family; just like how Harry Melling technically owned the #9 team but the Elliotts ran it). When you consider that Cale Yarborough won back-to-back Daytona 500s right after that, this might honestly be the worst career move in NASCAR history.

Roush chose Martin over other drivers because he was more interested in the cars than his salary. Always the cheapskate, huh?