He is equal parts enigma and race car driver. Even when we put him under a microscope, the way we do professional athletes, there isn't a whole lot we truly know about Mark Martin.
If life were a game show and we asked the real Mark Martin to please step forward, we would be left with a 5-foot 6-inch, 150-pounder with arms crossed and a what-am-I-doing-here look on his face.
The Mark Martin we know is steady and consistent, keeper of a rock-solid psyche that we can pin prick, and poke, and prod, and still not penetrate. Sure, he'll be forthright and speak his mind, but beyond a burning desire to race, do we know the real Mark Martin?
Even last year, when he slipped down the Winston Cup charts, finishing 12th in points, the public persona never cracked or never let the media or the public wrestle it down. If ever we were to catch Mark Martin with his guard down, with his soul bared so we could figure him out, surely last season would have been the time.
For 11 consecutive years, Martin's career path and pattern of success were board straight, never veering below sixth in the final Winston Cup rundown. From the 1989 season through the '99 campaign, he was runner-up three times in the battle for the championship, and four times he was third. He won 31 races during that stretch, including a career-high seven in '98. Then in 2000, he slipped to eighth in points and won just one race. Those numbers grew weaker last season, when he was winless for the first time since '88 and dropped even further in points.
Twelfth in points? Most stock car drivers can only dream of reaching that level of success in Winston Cup. But Martin is a racer in the purest sense. Racing is all he's ever known, really. That and trucking, the profession his rowdy father, the late Julian Martin, chose. So 12th was not up to Mark's usual level of success.
"It's not the kind of success that I've had for 20 years," he says. "No matter what kind of racing I've done I've been a contender, ever since I started in dirt racing in '74. I didn't feel like I was a contender in 2001, but I tried just as hard as I ever had."
Beyond that, 2001 is not something Martin dwells on. "I keep my eye on the target and keep looking ahead," he says.
It's that laser focus that helps him deal with the highs and lows of a professional athlete's life, and he's experienced both extremes. He first gave Winston Cup a try in the early '80s, but then packed it in and returned to the American Speed Association circuit for four years, running just six Cup races during that time, including none for two seasons. The practical, calculated side of Mark Martin led to that unusual U-turn.
"You know, I gave up on it and just went where I could make a living," he says. "That's what I do, is race, and I went where I could go and make a living racing and win races. After three years of that I grew anxious to go back and try another shot at the highest level.
"I found out after being married with four kids that I was going to have to live a pretty lean lifestyle on what I could make ASA racing. There was a motivation for me to do better for my family and there had always been the motivation to be the best ...."
Role ModelsTo be the best. There's the drive and determination coming through, something he got from his father, Julian, the one who helped the teenage Mark build race cars and helped nurture his career.
Julian Martin was a rough-and-tumble sort; a man who had built a successful Batesville, Arkansas, trucking business from scratch; a man with a fierce temper and the intense determination needed to succeed in a tough business-racing or trucking. Where Mark is practical and calculated, Julian, who died in a plane crash in 1998, was impetuous and more seat-of-the-pants.