Mark Martin has the No. 10 spot in the Nextel Cup standings heading into Saturday night's race at Richmond. Credit: Autostock

Q&A: Mark Martin

Mark Martin's third-place finish at California pushed him into the coveted No. 10 spot in the Chase for Nextel Cup heading into this cut off race at Richmond. He's just 24 points from the 400-point cut off and comes to Richmond with four top-three finishes in his last six races.

He's got one career win at Richmond in the 1990 spring race and also has three career poles there, the last coming in the 2001 spring race. And he finished seventh after starting 12th there this spring.

Q: How did your family and your property fare during Hurricane Frances?

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Martin: Well, my family went with me to California because of the hurricane. They hadn't planned on going. The property held up pretty good. My office got damage, water damage, and we had some problems there. Horrendous mess around there. You know, basically pretty much that was it, water damage at my hangar and office, big mess there.

I'm in Batesville, Arkansas, at the Ford dealership, Mark Martin Ford here. The weather conditions really aren't that good down there even at this time. I'm not too anxious to fly down there. I'm supposed to be testing tonight at Charlotte for Goodyear, testing again tomorrow, but that doesn't look very good, either.

I'm kind of hanging out here at the Ford dealership and just kind of waiting to see, you know, what happens.

Q: You pushed your way into the top 10 after your finish at California. That's for the first time this season. Talk about really being in the right place at the right time, I guess. You've come all the way back from your 43rd-place finish at Daytona to find yourself now on the doorstep for a place in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Can you talk about your long trip to get to this point.

Martin: Well, every time that we got close, we had another mechanical failure, which we've had, you know, just a tremendous amount of this year. You know, we were well on our way several times and then would get our legs knocked out from under us.

We have had tremendous performance this year from the Viagra team. The cars have been really fast. We had our share of mechanical misfortunes. But the car has been a top-five car, and this is a top-five team every week for the past 10 or 12 weeks. This is a team that deserves to be comfortably in that thing.

Maybe we'll get lucky and not have any trouble Saturday night. If so, this is a team that can contend for the Cup, I believe. I really do. If we don't make it, you know, we've given it our best shot. I'm so thankful and feel so privileged to be a part of this team and to be able to drive these cars.

Q. Of all the seasons you've had in Cup, when you look at how this team has come back and come back, come back, the kind of just mechanical nightmares you guys have had over the course of the year, it just seems to make you guys stronger and people say if you stay in the top 10 that you will be the guy to beat. Can you just talk about I guess Pat Tryson being the glue that's held this deal together through all the adversity that this team has faced this year.

Martin: Amazing. I mean, I just don't know -- you know? I don't know what else to say. Pat has been our leader. He's managed to really pull this team together. You just couldn't find, you know, more loyal people and more capable people than those guys. Each and every one on this race team right now is, you know, loyal to their very core.

Their heart is really in this thing. I feel it. I feel the love, you know, from these guys, and they feel it back. It's a real special time in my life. It's a very family feeling situation that we're in right now. Feels like family with the 6 car team.

Q. You spoke with the passion that it seems like you've been speaking with the last several weeks, anyway. How badly do you want this this year? I don't know if it's any more than in any past years, but how badly do you want to get in there and finally maybe go for your first Cup championship?

Martin: Well, you know, I'm not sure that I can give you, you know, a great description of how badly I want it. But I will say that this has been -- this has been more pressure than I've ever felt. There are some reasons to that that we won't go into. And this has been as difficult as anything I've ever done in my career, which is to try to overcome how much we spotted the competition.

I'd have to say this has been one of the most difficult times in my career. But usually a lot of times those are the ones that turn around and give you the most rewarding results. So we're just going to stand by and see what happens here over the next few months.

Q. A lot of the guys necessarily haven't been around as long as you have. In terms of the pressure of just this one race, coming down to it, you've been in a lot of races, do you feel the pressure?

Martin: Absolutely not. That was like, you know, a needle in a haystack compared to the pressure that has been on me this year to elevate the performance of the team.

Martin says crew chief Pat Tryson has everyone on the No. 6 on the same page. Credit: Autostock

The performance is there. There is no pressure. There's no pressure on this race. The performance is there. I have a great car. Can't help it if we have a mechanical failure or if we get in a wreck. Those are things that I can't avoid.

There is no pressure on that because there's no way -- we can only control the things that we can control. Those we're doing a great job with. We will have a fast car.

Q. I don't know if I haven't been paying real close attention, but it seems the past month, two months, you have been always expressing yourself as so grateful to be doing what you do and driving the car that you drive. Has this been something reawakened in you or have I not been paying attention?

Martin: No. You've been paying attention. Here is what I'm doing: I'm saying that because I'm comparing that to what I went through a year ago. We raced last year a whole lot of the time for 25th place. I wasn't that grateful for what I was doing (laughter). I wasn't that happy about the performance and wasn't able to do anything about it.

I am incredibly grateful for a chance to drive cars that can win races and lead races and be contenders. But I just don't really care anything about racing for 25th. That wouldn't do it. That's not why I race. I will not race like that for very long. You know, thank goodness that I have the opportunity to work with such a wonderful group of people that are able to get this done. It feels so good.

Q. Jack (Roush) has mentioned once or twice that the drivers in the top 10, that's where the team strategy starts. Some drivers might go safe for fifth, sixth, seventh, some are going to look at it for Sprint car racing, you can win 10 or lose 10. What is your personal feeling?

Martin: Not worried about that yet.

Q. Talking to Ryan Newman today, some of the other drivers, it was like some of the drivers get together and they'll chat as they go out before the race, whatnot. I think you said you didn't know if maybe NASCAR would say anything. Before this race, everybody was talking about it, how intense and crazy it will be. You're such a veteran, known as a clean driver. If you were in a drivers' meeting, what would you say you would like to see around you if you could explain it to us?

Martin: It's just going to be the same racing as always. You know, it's always intense on the racetrack. You know, there is not 43 live-or-die positions at stake here, there's only about eight or seven or six. I'm sure you know the number better than I do. It's probably five or six spots that are, you know, really under the gun here.

I think the racing's always intense. I don't expect it to be that much more intense than normal. We'll just go out and race our race like we always do.

Q. So you wouldn't want to say to anybody, "Hey, no cheap shots at this race," people are vying for position, Jeremy Mayfield, they feel like their whole mission is on this one race?

Martin: No, I'd like to see everybody race like they always do. You know, I don't see a lot of cheap shots anyway. I'd just like to see the same racing as always: intense, fair, clean as usual.

Q. You don't want to talk a whole lot about this until the race is coming over this weekend. Why?

Martin: Because I've had my heart broke plenty of times in this business. Things seem to find a way of not working out for me. If I don't count my chickens before they hatch, then I won't have any problems here.

We've got a race to go do at Richmond. We go do our job, everything goes our way, we'll have something to talk about Saturday night. If it doesn't, we'll set our sites on winning a bunch of races here in the last 10 races, which I know that we can do with our team right now.

Q. At one point in the season when things were kind of going badly, it sounded like you almost conceded any hope to win the championship. How low were you? Does the comeback make it extra special to dig yourself out of that hole?

Martin says his team still has business to finish before they can think about the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Credit: Autostock

Martin: You know, we have come back, but we haven't. You know, we really haven't totally done it until Saturday night's over with. It's very gratifying to work with such a great race team and have an opportunity to win races and everything. There's, you know, been a lot of pressure to make the Top 10 cut. I didn't think that we could do it when we spotted the competition over and over and over again so many points.

But we managed to do it. That's a great thing so far. But we do have another race to contend with, so we'll see how that turns out. But I'm sure that we're going to have a fast race car and a great effort. How it turns out, you know, is how it turns out.

Q. Will you do anything Saturday night to keep yourself appraised of where your competition is, have a guy with a calculator figuring out points, your spotter telling you where McMurray and Newman are, anything like that at all?

Martin: Well, if they're behind me, it won't matter, you know, so we don't have to do a calculator. That's what we're really shooting for. If we position those guys behind us, it won't make any difference. I won't not race because I don't have to. I'll run the same race I always do, which is as aggressive as makes sense for the situation.

You know, I'll do my very best to try to win the race, my very best to try to run in the top five. If we run in the top five, you know, it's a no-brainer, done-deal. If we can't run there, then we'll try to run in the top 10. If we do that, we're pretty comfortable with that.

We'll make the best of the situation. But, you know, there's things that sometimes you do miss a setup, sometimes the air comes out of the tires or something breaks, you can't miss a wreck, whatever. The team and I will do our best to avoid all those things.

Q. Going into Richmond, Ryan was saying there's a good prospect you can pass, even though it's a short track. What are your feelings about this track setting up the race?

Martin: I think it's great. I think it's a great place to race. I wouldn't get too carried away with Richmond being the greatest place in the world to bring the Chase down to because I think that all races mean the same. In other words, Daytona in February was just as important as Richmond is, although the media tends to focus on the last race. But the last race isn't the make-or-breaker. All of them are in a cumulative way, they accumulate.

Richmond is a great place to race, we love that. How you do at Richmond is no more important than how you did at all the others. If we would have done a better job, we'd be locked in right now with controlling our fate (laughter). But it's come right down to that race, and we're going to go there and we're going to do everything we can to control our destiny.

Q. Sounds like you're so happy about the way things are going, does this change your perspective about how much longer you want to do this? At the end of last season you were wondering, like you said, if that's the way your career was going to end. Now things are going so well, are you thinking about maybe wanting to do this a while longer while the team is this good, while you're still this competitive?

Martin: I certainly would say that my outlook is totally different than it was a year ago. A year ago, you know, I would have got out if I could. But I had commitments. When you have commitments, you do 'em, and that's it, if you're me. That's it. But, obviously, this year has been totally different. Yes, it feels much better. Yes, I feel like now I can compete against these young guys that were out there beating my brains in week in and week out.

I'm the same race car driver as I was a year ago that wasn't getting the performance on the racetrack and getting the job done. The only difference is is that what I'm driving today will go, it will go (laughter). You know, it was a very frustrating year for me last year and a very gratifying year for me this year.

Q. But has it changed your perspective on retirement, how much longer you want to do this?

Martin: I appreciate your question, and I appreciate your persistence. You know, we're just going to have to work with what I gave you. I don't have anything to announce at this point in time. I would love to make the Top 10 after Saturday night and have a chance to race for the championship in 2004 and plan on going out and winning it in 2005. That's as far as I'm talking about right now. That's more than enough to be worried about.