A particular NASCAR veteran faced immense resistance in his fight for the championship format. However, he won it anyway, as the sanctioning body made the necessary adjustments. However, the veteran could not win a fight 30 years ago, as he was up against a legendary icon – Dale Earnhardt.

When Dale Earnhardt’s words meant everything

“No one wants to go in the direction that I’ve been screaming since 1995, you know, like 1995 we had aero push for, you know, and people were tired of it, and I said, ‘We need to take downforce out of these cars,’ and Earnhardt said, ‘No, we need more downforce.’ So, we got more downforce,” Mark Martin said on an episode of the Mark Martin Archive podcast.

In the mid-1990s, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Mark Martin clashed several times on the track. The seven-time champion would get on the outside of Martin’s car. That was when cars were starting to get aero loose with a car on the outside. In a Michigan race, things got out of hand as Martin responded and both wrecked their cars. These short battles exemplified the two drivers’ rivalry. And as Martin mentions now, that rivalry extended to influential decisions as well.

The introduction of the Next-Gen car in 2022 raised the importance of aerodynamic force. It allows the chasing pack to get really close to the leaders, without getting loose as they did in the older version. In superspeedway races like the Daytona 500 or the Yellawood 500, this problem emerges most prominently. It can lead to severe crashes – like the harrowing 25+ car pile-up in the October 2024 Talladega race. So, Mark Martin‘s fight against aero-tight cars is still ongoing without respite.

“I still believe that the trailing car problem that they have, the dirty air problem that they have, is bigger than it’s ever been in the history of the sport. It’s been growing ever since 1993, and now it’s the biggest ever. I believe that I’m the only person that believes that it can be cured, but it brings a lot of other problems up, and it requires a lot of change, and you’re going to have drivers that resist that and probably teams that resist it,” Dale Earnhardt’s old rival continued.

As Mark Martin continues with his racetrack analysis, he also sheds light on an off-track duty.

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Urging the cameras to do the work

We are now back to the Chase format in the NASCAR championship. According to this, the opening 26 races will reward season-long performance through a traditional points system. This flips many of the highly protested aspects of the playoff format, like rewarding postseason spots to anyone with a win and resetting points after every playoff round. Now that talented drivers can breathe easy and focus on points throughout the season, Mark Martin observed a duty for the media as well.

The 40-time Cup race winner urged the coverage to focus on the center of the competition. “Instead of every week talking about the cutoff line, the playoff, who’s in, who’s out, all these things, we need to focus even more on our heroes.” He added, “These guys behind me that are winning these races are our Pearsons and our Yarboroughs and our Buddy Bakers of today, and we need our fans to connect with these guys.”

Mark Martin also argued for an expansion of the limelight beyond the drivers. “We need them to connect with the crew chiefs. We need to connect with the engineers as well. Give the fans something that they can connect to and help us bill these superstars like they deserve to be.”

Clearly, Dale Earnhardt’s former rival is still focused on revamping the sport. Let’s wait and see how the 2026 season turns out after his efforts.