Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 Viagra Taurus, is fifth in the NASCAR
NEXTEL Cup Series point standings, trailing leaders Jimmie Johnson and
Tony Stewart by 51 points. Martin spoke about this weekend's race at
Martinsville as well as the rest of the season prior to Friday practice.
MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus
ARE YOU GLAD TO GET LAST WEEKEND OUT OF THE WAY?
"I have to be careful about agreeing with that because I love Charlotte
so much and Lowe's Motor Speedway, but I was relieved to get through
that. We were conservative on things, so we should have been one of the
last two blow a tire out, but as the race went - sooner or later it gets
to you (laughing). All of the early birds had their trouble and sooner
or later that backs up to you, so, yeah, it was good to get that behind
us. Our was awesome. It was fantastic. It was a night where we had a few
setbacks on pit road - not all pit stuff. We almost had a wreck on pit
road."
CAN YOU TAKE A RACE LIKE LAST WEEK MORE IN STRIDE THAN OTHERS?
"It was easier to take because we had a little bit more to say in our
destiny there than we did at Talladega. In other words, we could be
more conservative on air. We didn't have to put air in when NASCAR came
around with the air thing. We were already there. I don't know how many
didn't, but I know a lot of them that did have, we were already there
and we were already very competitive with all of those things. So it's
frustrating if you get caught out. If we would have had a tire problem,
then I would have been one of the ones frustrated, but at least we had
the opportunity to have more air in our tires, to have more scuffs. The
first three sets of tires we put on, my right rears had 20 laps on them.
They were 20-lappers. Most of the time you throw them away, so we did
things to try to help us. At Talladega you can't. I'm trying to explain
to you that it wasn't as frustrating of a race for me as one where I've
got no control over the outcome."
DO YOU THINK WAS NASCAR RIGHT IN MANDATING AIR PRESSURE?
"Yes, I do. I don't see a bit of problem with that. They should have
been there anyway. We were."
SHOULD THEY MAKE THAT A REQUIREMENT? HOW WOULD THEY POLICE IT?
"No, necessarily I don't. But under the circumstances they were
contemplating shortening the race. I think making the teams put air in
their tires that were below what they thought they should have been
wasn't as bad as saying, 'OK, in 20 laps the checkered flag is coming
out.' I think that would have been horrible for everyone."
WAS IT JUST CHARLOTTE OR DO YOU PLAY WITH AIR PRESSURE?
"We play with air-pressure a lot. I can feel tire trouble by how hard it
pulls from a tire. I know if it's gonna be a tough one or not."
SO DID YOUR SENSES PLAY INTO GETTING THROUGH LAST WEEK?
"I'll say this because I had an interesting question after the race.
'So and so said he was running 80 percent. How hard were you running?'
I was running as hard as I thought I could get away with, the same as I
do every week. It's just that this week I was further away from all the
way, but I don't run these front tires like these young boys do ever -
ever. Because you know what, if they ever get a long green - like at
Kansas had some long greens - if they ever do get a long green, you
notice I'm usually coming back. These guys don't have experience. They
didn't race in the tire war. They didn't race when the tires blew out
like that - a lot - and hit concrete walls. It really, really, really
hurt. But forget how bad it hurts. That's not why I really shy away from
it, I know that you can't win championships and you can't score points
in the wall. So we tested there and we knew that the tires were gonna be
a problem. In fact, I think I had one go down in testing. If I recall
correctly, we had a right-front go down in testing. We saw a number of
others that did. We addressed it and we did our best to address it. We
usually do play with air-pressure, but I could tell how hard that place
was and that it was really gonna be tough."
COULD THIS CHAMPIONSHIP COME TO YOU BECAUSE OF YOUR EXPERIENCE?
"That helps a little bit, but let's talk about fast learners. Let's
talk about Jimmie Johnson. He blew a right-front on lap 27 of the Busch
race and he won the 500. So let's don't get all puffed up and think
we're smarter than all these people. Let's remember that we've got
some fast learners out here, too, and that was a little bit of new
situation slightly for some of the high-tech drivers, but some of these
guys learn real fast and that's why they're in the top 10. Some of
the others that are real fast that didn't learn quite as quick, they
aren't in the top 10. So, sure, my experience helps me. I do run my
car as fast as I think I can get away with it all the time, and that's
rarely 100 percent - except maybe the last 30 laps at Kansas when it
was time to let it go. The rest of the time I sense things and feel
things and I'm always trying to make my car better. The problem we
had at Charlotte was we couldn't protect the right-front because we'd
blister the right-rear. If we tried to protect the right-front too
much, we'd tear the right-rear off of it. That was a concern, too, and
that's the box it really put me in. Usually if it's just protecting the
right-front, I can do that. But when I can't protect the right-front
because the right-rear is gonna give out, then I'm like, 'Oooh, this is
tougher.' So when the tire blew on lap 27 of the Busch race I called Pat
(Tryson) immediately. As soon as he hit the wall I said, 'Pat, where
are those 15 lappers from practice?' Always before when I do that they
always say, 'Well, we already turned them in.' But I had three sets of
15-20 lappers from practice and that's six right-rears. You can make all
of them right-rears, so that was six sets of right rears."
SO YOU WERE ON SCUFFS WHEN EVERYONE ELSE WAS ON STICKERS?
"We did go to stickers later on in the race because we used more tires
than we expected with all the cautions, and we did run some stickers,
but I'm just saying that immediately on lap 27 of the Busch race started
making a plan based on my experience. Whereas a high tech driver is
up there, 'He blew a tire.' I was like, 'Hey Pat, where are those 15
lappers. You got an 20s? That's six sets of right rears right there.'
That stuff does happen, but how much does it help? I don't know. Jimmie
Johnson just whooped us."
WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN A BETTER TRACK FOR YOU?
"I don't get along with small, flat tracks. Small, banked tracks I'm
real good at."
WAS IT THE SAME IN ASA?
"Yeah, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Rusty won at the first time he went there,
which was a flat half-mile - a lot like Martinsville. I went there and
I ran fifth, but when I went to Winchester, which is like Bristol, we
won. The race tracks that I'm not my best at are the ones where the
rear tires will spin. I'm not the best at a place where the rear tires
spin. My specialty is momentum, not stopping and going. My specialty is
momentum. That's why with I do lower horsepower cars because I don't
stop them. A lot of these guys go in the corner real hard, stop, and
go again real good and they get the tires to not spin, and all I ever
work on is rolling across the middle real fast, which makes you spin
the tires coming off and then I get to driving like a rookie and start
spinning my wheels."
DO YOU GO INTO THIS RACE THINKING THAT MAYBE YOU DON'T GAIN POINTS THIS
RACE?
"This is the first time I've come to Martinsville in years with a lot of
confidence. I can tell you right now that we're gonna win on Sunday. I'm
tired of being called a pessimist. It's the most ridiculous thing I've
ever heard of. We can win here Sunday and I believe that we might. We
have the same car that we ran third with. We led this race for a short
period of time and we ran third, and it hasn't been scratched since we
ran it. It ran good in practice; it wasn't a fluke; it ran good the
whole race. It's a good race car plain and simple. I have every reason
to believe that we should run good again because we have the same car
without a scratch on it."
IT OUGHT TO BE GOOD.
"It ought to be good. Now I've seen it where you come back with the same
stuff and it won't work. I have seen that happen, but I have confidence
coming in here that we're gonna be good."
DOES IT MATTER WHERE YOU QUALIFY HERE?
"It makes me mad to qualify poorly, but it doesn't have any real major
bearing on the outcome. It just irritates me because I'm a competitor
and I don't understand why people can beat me that bad. I think we were
19th here in the spring, but the car was really good in happy hour and
it was really good throughout the race. I feel really confident, as
confident as I felt going into Charlotte, where we run good all the time
and where we knew we would run good. I'm very confident."
WHY DO YOU THINK THERE'S A DRIVER SHORTAGE?
"I think in the past the drivers weren't harvested because you didn't
need them. There wasn't as great a demand and now we have 38 or 40
really top teams and we may have only had 28 before, so I think we have
harvested them for a reason. I'm a big young driver supporter. I've been
high on that when you all thought there was something wrong with me. I
was criticized for all that and then it happened. But right now there
just aren't any that are available that are ready. There are some guys
available that aren't here, but they're tied up and waiting for their
opportunity with their respective contracts."
IS THAT AN ISSUE WITH DRIVERS BEING TIED UP WITH OTHER GROUPS?
"Obviously, that restricts one or two that might. Maybe in the old days
you'd run out and get Clint Bowyer, or you might run out and get Martin
Truex. Obviously those guys are pretty much ready to make the step, but
they are tied up and spoken for. You have to be forward thinking and
think further ahead, and even if you don't think you need it, you need
to be on it because Roush Racing probably didn't think they needed it
four months ago and now we need more than what we have in our arsenal."
IS THERE A CHANCE YOU COULD STILL RETIRE THIS YEAR OR IS NEXT YEAR A
DONE DEAL AS FAR AS COMING BACK IN '06?
"My deal is a done deal now. It's a done deal with the sponsor and all
of those agreements are done. If Jamie were to get loose, he would wind
up in the 97 car."
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE RUSTY WINDING DOWN? THAT WAS YOU TOO A
COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO.
"I came out of Talladega very frustrated with myself for getting into
the situation of having to go forward and needing to go forward one
year. But I'm really at peace with it because, and I've said before and
I think everybody knows, I'm at peace with it because of what Jack Roush
has done for me and for what my team has done for me. Even more than
Jack Roush, these guys love me and they've never questioned me. They're
behind me 100 percent and they've made compromises in their lives so
that I could have success on Sunday, but the way I deal with this is
I'm not dealing with next year until next year. I can't do it. I will
overload. I will short-circuit. I don't know anything about next year. I
don't know how I'm gonna deal with it. I don't know how I'm going to use
my psychology to get through it. I don't know. I'm not dealing with it
right now. I'm not gonna do it."
IT SEEMS LIKE THIS IS 95 PERCENT A FAVOR TO JACK AS FAR AS YOU DOING
THIS.
"It started out to be the right thing for Jack Roush and Roush Racing.
That was the convincing factor in the very beginning. What it would
mean to Roush Racing if I would come back for one year. So that sort of
soaked in and then it became apparent what it would mean to the guys
that I'm calling my heroes and, to me now, that means more to me than
even the Jack Roush thing. But these guys here, I raced for 25th place
in 2003. You've all heard me say and I'll say it again, I raced for 25th
place. These guys made a winner out of me. I'll do anything for them -
anything - because we don't know that I haven't won the championship
this year yet. In my opinion, they have given me the best year of my
career. It has been. The performance has been awesome. We haven't backed
into fifth-place in points this year."
Continued in part 2
