The offer was about as gentle as a racing invitation gets. Climb into a late-model stock car at Pensacola, run a few laps, and don’t worry about speed. Nobody would time it. But Mark Martin, 40-time Cup Series winner, said no anyway.
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His reason comes from what another fellow veteran racer has said previously. In an interaction with Motorsport.com this week, Martin said, “I just enjoy not being under that kind of pressure. No one realizes – Kenny Wallace is right, competition will kill you.”
Going further, Martin did not hesitate in saying that racing in NASCAR drained the joy out of what he loved to do. A casual test session sounds harmless, but a man who spent decades measuring himself against the clock doesn’t know how to run a lap without doing it.
Thus, when Martin heard the ‘just run a few laps’ pitch, he took it as a request to run half a second off the pace, and he wanted nothing to do with that. His assessment of his own abilities was blunt.
“Now, I don’t care how much I practice. I can’t see as good, I can’t hear as good, and my old processor’s slower than a turd.”
For those who have followed developments around Martin, this may not entirely be new information. In a 2021 NASCAR.com report, Martin said he’d lost interest in even playing cards or games, anything that put a winner and a loser on the table. He sold his private jet, quit flying, and settled into business interests around his hometown of Batesville, Arkansas.
When he speaks of pressure, he knows what he’s talking about. Between 1981 and 2013, Martin made 882 Cup Series starts. In 2009, at age 50, he won five races and finished second in the standings. Every result came with pressure attached, and he carried it for more than three decades. The idea of walking back into that, even in a smaller car on a smaller track, doesn’t appeal to him.
This is where the comparison with Dale Earnhardt Jr. comes up, and why it is particularly noticeable. After stepping away from full-time NASCAR competition after 2017, Earnhardt has continued to make occasional appearances in the grassroots racing scene, including through the CARS Tour, which he co-owns with Kevin Harvick, Justin Marks, and Jeff Burton.
His latest outing at Newport Speedway offered another opportunity to reconnect with the kind of short-track racing that helped shape his early career.
Driving his Sun Drop Chevrolet, Earnhardt Jr. finished ninth in the Late Model Stock feature at the Tennessee venue. The result was not a win, but his assessment afterward suggested that the experience was about more than the finishing position.
In his Dale Jr. Debrief video with FloRacing, Earnhardt Jr. said it was “a blast to drive” at Newport. He also noted that the track’s multiple racing grooves created opportunities for close, side-by-side action.
The event had been moved from Saturday to Friday because of inclement weather, yet Earnhardt Jr. praised the turnout and the involvement of the series’ sponsors and partners. His response illustrates why occasional racing appearances can remain attractive to retired drivers.
Earnhardt Jr. can return to a familiar environment, challenge himself against other competitors and enjoy the experience without committing to another full-time NASCAR campaign and the pressures that come attached to it.
Martin openly acknowledged that the idea seemed appealing, but then he added the catch; “I look at what Junior’s doing, and I think that it would be pretty incredible to try to do that. But Junior is a whole lot younger than I am, and I don’t have it anymore. I’m sorry, I don’t. I know. You may not know, but I know, I don’t have it, and I had it. Anywhere, anytime, drop the hammer, no practice, no getting used to it; that was me.”
The difference here is that Earnhardt is driving with nothing to prove, while Martin feels he does not know how to drive without being competitive. Going flat-out is what he knows best, and the evidence is in the results; 40 victories, 56 poles and 453 top-10 finishes. For a driver accustomed to competing at that level, returning without the same sharpness could introduce precisely the frustration he now prefers to avoid.
Yet, interestingly, that’s not to say he avoids every opportunity to get behind the wheel. Earlier this year, Martin was on the announced driver list for the IROC revival at Ten Tenths Motor Club, where his five series championships remain the benchmark. He also agreed to serve as the honorary pace car driver for the Goodyear 400 at Darlington, where his 12 wins tie Dale Earnhardt Sr. for the most.
However, when a fan asked him in March on X whether he’d consider a one-off comeback like Tony Stewart with Kaulig in Trucks, he had a blunt, two-word response; “hell no.”
Martin even points to proof that his stance isn’t a universal rule. Bill Elliott, just about four years older than Martin, still races, and Martin says some drivers simply never lose the touch. He knows he isn’t one of them.
Hence, the Pensacola offer stays unfilled, and Earnhardt’s late model season rolls on without a Hall of Fame rival joining in. Two drivers from the same sport have landed on opposite answers to the same question. Earnhardt keeps going back because a result no longer defines him. Martin stays out because for him it always did.
He remembers exactly how fast felt, and he’d rather keep that memory than measure it against a stopwatch.