Wednesday, Jul. 09, 2008

Martin's move makes a lot of sense

It's really hard to find fault with what Mark Martin is doing right now. At 49 years old, Martin already has had a very successful career in NASCAR. With 35 victories in the Sprint Cup Series, he could ease into retirement, and few questions would be asked.

There's one problem. Martin has been bitten pretty severely by the racing bug. It's something that causes fans to love racing and drivers to have a hard time stepping away from the sport. It also causes drivers like Martin to hunger for a championship that may have eluded them for their entire career, no matter how hard they may try to scale back to a part-time schedule with retirement being at the end of the journey.

That's why it really shouldn't be too surprising that Martin will be driving for Hendrick Motorsports next year, replacing Casey Mears. Even in what is considered to be a down year for the team compared to last season, Hendrick is still a very good team with three drivers currently in the top 12 in the points standings.

If Martin turned down Rick Hendrick's offer, it would have been similar to a family dog staring at a plate full of leftover spaghetti and refusing to eat it. If Martin would have said no to Hendrick, there would have been some serious questions about Martin, perhaps wondering if he had somehow inhaled some bad fumes in his car.

The only questions about Martin recently have focused on when he plans to actually retire. He initially planned for 2005 to be his final season before being coaxed back for one more year by car owner Jack Roush. Since then, Martin hasn't quite been ready to retire, driving part-time for Ginn Motorsports before the team was sold to Dale Earnhardt Inc.

There's no reason that Martin should be taken to task for being so indecisive. As long as Martin isn't a danger to either himself or his competitors and he isn't embarrassing himself, there's no reason for him to retire.

To demand that Martin should hang up his driving helmet just makes very little sense unless that comes from Mears, who is out of a job for 2009, at least for the time being.

And don't expect Martin to be a token sentimental driver who will mentor Hendrick's drivers instead of striving for victories and the elusive points championship.

Remember, this is the same driver who would have won the Daytona 500 last year had the caution flag come out a few seconds earlier or if Kevin Harvick hadn't gotten a final burst of speed toward the checkered flag. After being so close to winning at Daytona, Martin led the points standings for the first four races before beginning his part-time schedule.

This April at Phoenix, Martin had one of the top cars throughout the race and was in contention until a late-race pit stop foiled his chances of picking up the win.

Clearly, Martin hasn't forgotten how to drive a race car. And there's no better place for him to reinforce that than with Hendrick Motorsports.