There is no one -- and I am including Jimmie Johnson here -- that doesn't want to see Mark Martin win a Sprint Cup Series championship. At 50, he now races against younger drivers who grew up as Mark Martin fans. And, as happens in sports, even those fans who used to boo him lustily during his days as one of Dale Earnhardt's greatest foils, now give him standing ovations each and every week during prerace driver introductions. Just last week he was named NASCAR Illustrated's Person of the Year.
But after Sunday's race at Phoenix -- despite finishing fourth -- his shoulders were drooped. He knew, like we all did, that yet another Cup had been won right off the nose of his ride. "I have lost them to the best," he said with a shrug. "Earnhardt, Stewart, Gordon, and now maybe Jimmie. And yes, he has to be in any conversation about the best."
That kind of humility is why if -- when -- Martin finally ends his lifelong quest for the Cup, we will see a celebration that might match the garage-wide eruption of joy that came after Dale Earnhardt's 1998 Daytona 500 victory.
But until then, Mark Martin will have to continue to live with the title "Best Driver Never to Win a Championship." Here's a look at Mark's record four runner-up finishes (with, barring a "2012"-ish natural disaster this weekend, number five on deck). After Sunday's season finale we'll either be able to toss this list into the shredder forever or I'll be updating it for next year.
On February 25, 1990, Martin had earned the second win of his still-new career, a hard-fought Richmond victory over Dale Earnhardt and his old short track buddy Rusty Wallace. Jack Roush, in just his third season as a team owner, was still celebrating with his driver when the word came from the garage. During post-race inspection, the aluminum spacer beneath the carburetor of the No. 6 Ford was found to be 2.5 inches thick. The legal limit was two inches. The win stood, but Roush and Martin were hit with a $40,000 fine and docked 46 points.
Roush filed an appeal, saying that it was an honest mistake and on a short track it provided no real advantage. His pleas fell on deaf ears.
Again, at the time, it seemed like no big deal. But nine months later it became a gigantic deal when Martin lost the Cup by 26 points. Without the Richmond misstep he would've won it by 20 points.
1994: Not even close
Finished 2nd behind: Dale Earnhardt
How far back: 444 points
Four years later, Martin finished second to Earnhardt yet again. This time, The Intimidator romped him and everyone else. "Truthfully, we weren't the second-place car that year," Martin recalled to me during an interview for what was supposed to be a pre-retirement feature in ESPN The Magazine. "Ernie Irvan was. But he'd had his [near fatal Michigan] crash that summer."
Martin closed out the season with a second-place finish at Phoenix and a win at the Atlanta finale, slipping past Wallace to finish second behind Earnhardt, who had already clinched his seventh Cup title with three races remaining in the season.
NASCAR's 50th anniversary season ended up becoming one of the greatest one-man demolition jobs in American motorsports history. Jeff Gordon won 13 races, tying Richard Petty's Modern Era record. The closest Martin came during the final six races of the year was 174 points -- more than a full race. "Our undoing that year was restrictor-plate races," Martin remembered. He was right. Of the 364 points he lost to Gordon throughout the year, 321 came at Daytona and Talladega.
The good news? He whipped third place Dale Jarrett as badly as Gordon whipped him, outdistancing Jarrett by 345 points.
With seven races to go, it looked like Martin's biggest Cup competition was going to be out-of-nowhere rookie sensation Jimmie Johnson. At Talladega, Martin and Johnson started the race on the front row, thanks to a Friday time trials rainout. During the parade laps, Martin's steering wheel went wonky and he wrecked into Johnson's Chevy before the green flag had even been dropped. Martin finished 30th, Johnson 37th and second-place finisher Tony Stewart moved into the points lead.
Martin finished second in the season's second-to-last event at Rockingham. But once again, he was bitten by post-race inspection when a front spring didn't meet the minimum number of coils. Martin was docked 25 points. Roush filed a last-minute appeal, which was heard during a special hearing the day before the race weekend started. It was denied.
Instead of entering the Homestead-Miami finale 64 points in arrears, he trailed Stewart by 89. He finished fourth on the night and lost the title by 38.
After yet another bridesmaid season, Martin was once again gracious in defeat. Roush? Not so much, as he re-invoked the angry memories and conspiracy claims of 1990. The following year, Roush finally earned his elusive championship when Matt Kenseth won the Cup. Kurt Busch added number two the following fall. Martin? He's still waiting.
Credit where credit is due
NASCAR has endured more than its share of criticism over its substance abuse policy since former Truck Series driver Aaron Fike's April 2008 admission that he'd used heroin on the same days that he'd raced.
On January 1, 2009, NASCAR replaced the previous 20-year-old "reasonable suspicion" policy with a random testing procedure that is administered by Nashville-based Aegis Labs.
Throughout the '09 season the sanctioning body has been called out by critics for a lack of transparency and a hard-to-find list of banned substances, particularly as the Jeremy Mayfield debacle grew ugly throughout late spring and early summer. But when you take a moment to remember where they were just one year ago -- basically at zero -- and where they are now -- nearly a dozen crew members and one driver have been caught and suspended -- it really is quite remarkable how they have gotten this cumbersome battleship turned.
One group that has taken notice is a newspaper that doesn't exactly have a reputation of being easily impressed: the Wall Street Journal. Late last week, the WSJ analyzed and ranked 22 sports leagues on the effectiveness of their substance abuse programs. They used what they call a "clarity quotient," with 100 being the highest possible score. Anything under 50 is considered "insufficient."
NASCAR's not-yet year-old policy scored an even 90.0 and ranked fifth out of 22, trailing only the international organizations that govern boxing, the Olympics, tennis and track and field. The NFL was ranked ninth (72.5), the NBA 13th (57.5), Major League Baseball 17th (56.2) and the NCAA 18th (55.0).
In case you were wondering, the bottom rung was held by the X Games with a 15.0, barely nipping the Canadian Football League and the World's Strongest Man Competition.
Ryan McGee is a senior writer with ESPN The Magazine. He started with ESPN
in 1994 working on the production staff of the show "RPM2Night,"during which
time he began contributing to The Mag. From 2001-03 he produced "Totally
NASCAR" on FOX Sports Net and for five years served as editor in chief at
NASCAR Media Group, winning two Sports Emmys and penning the script for the
documentary film "Dale".
Ryan McGee
