Drivers taking notice of Martin's part-time success

CONCORD, N.C. -- Jeff Gordon never would have considered it. Who would sponsor him? How would he run for a championship? Competing one day on a partial schedule seemed anathema to everything he had learned over his illustrious Cup career, which taught him that you run every race or you don't run at all.

Then he saw Mark Martin, contending for race wins and lingering on the outer fringe of the Chase for the Nextel Cup, all while spending a few weekends at home. And his mind began to change.

Mark Martin

2007 results (eight starts)

Race	Site	Start	Finish
1	Daytona	26	2
2	Fontana	3	5
3	Las Vegas	14	5
4	Atlanta	4	10
7	Texas	6	3
8	Phoenix	20	12
10	Richmond	9	17
11	Darlington	37	14

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"I can tell you what, what Mark has done has probably extended my career," Gordon said at Lowe's Motor Speedway, site of Sunday's Coca-Cola 600. "It's now going to make me look at when that day comes when I feel like I can longer race full time in the Cup Series. I might still want to race part time."

He's won 35 races on NASCAR's premier circuit, come heartbreaking close to winning a title four times, and done it all with class and grace. But Martin's most enduring legacy could be proving that it's possible to race at a championship level without racing every week. The man who once made 621 consecutive starts currently stands 15th in points, well within reach of a berth in the 12-man Chase. This despite competing part time, with three fewer races than everyone else.

"I've run them all for several years and not been this high in the points," Martin said. "I guess that speaks highly for what we've done when we were on the track."

Martin is scheduled to make 26 starts this season for Ginn Racing, and may add one more if the impending birth of Gordon's daughter forces Hendrick Motorsports to use him in a substitute role at Infineon Raceway. That's not enough to keep him in championship contention, but it has been enough to catch the attention of drivers past and present, and convince them that a partial schedule can work.

"If I'd have thought that, I'd still be driving the car," said former champion Rusty Wallace, who retired after the 2005 season and moved into the television booth. "I'd have taken a week off and relaxed a little bit and did that. If I look back on my career right now, and I love the television, but I wish I had done a partial schedule. If I had done a partial schedule, I could have been content with that. Because what really got me was being on the road 36 weeks. I just didn't enjoy it."

Martin splits his No. 01 car with rookie Regan Smith, seen as the heir apparent in the vehicle when Martin eventually steps down for good. Gordon can see himself slipping out of the driver's seat in the same manner, sharing time with a younger driver who will ultimately be his successor before turning his No. 24 car over to someone else. But that idea didn't fully crystallize until he witnessed the success Martin was enjoying this year.

"Every time I've always thought about it or brought it up to anybody, they're like, 'There's not a sponsor that's going to do that.' It's important, especially with the 24 team, to continue to race for championships. I'm not saying we could still pull it off, but it's something I would consider now," Gordon said.

Martin on standby

If points leader Jeff Gordon needs to skip a race to be present at his daughter's birth, Mark Martin will be there to take the wheel of the No. 24 car.

"Hopefully, it won't come to that," Martin said. "But I do admire Jeff for his commitment to be there when his daughter is born. I think it's awesome. It's a great position, and it's an honor, a real big honor that they thought enough of me to really pursue me."

"We wanted to have a backup plan, and the first person that we thought of was Mark Martin," Gordon said. "With the way we've been working with him at Hendrick, and with the Ginn team, we thought there might be interest. I put that out to him, and he's been very gracious. I hope we don't have to use him, but what an awesome opportunity for this DuPont 24 team to have a guy like that to step in for me if we needed him."

"That 24 team, they're a team that's always battled for the championship. I think they always will, whether I'm driving it or not driving it. If we maybe have a young, up-and-coming driver that we want to bring along slowly, that might be a great opportunity to do that, where I still race like Mark is and then we bring him in after that. That is a scenario I could possibly see, but I can't see that going for more than a year."

In Nextel Cup racing, there's one certainty -- anything that works gets copied. Gordon developed from a project into a champion, and young drivers became the norm. Ryan Newman won poles and races with engineering, and everyone rushed to add PhDs. Ray Evernham hired former athletes as over-the-wall pit crewmen, and others did the same. Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus used unorthodox setups to become title contenders, and everyone began stretching the edges of the technical envelope.

Martin's effort, former teammate Jeff Burton believes, will attract the same kind of attention. Past attempts at partial schedules, undertaken by champion drivers like Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte, started with hopeful intentions but fell flat. Now that Martin and Ginn have discovered a formula that works, everyone is watching.

"I think what he's done this year has opened some people's minds to doing something different from normal," Burton said. "I've got to tell you, I believe in my heart that for a young driver, running a full-time Busch series and running 10 or 12 Cup races is a great learning tool. And if you can do that with a guy like Mark Martin helping you, and your sponsor is investing in a young guy and wants to grow that guy, and you can bring a guy like Mark Martin in, why wouldn't you do that? I think it's a great idea. I think it works really well. I think you'll see more of it rather than less."

With a 231-point lead on the field and no signs of slowing, it appears Gordon can afford to take a week off in late June or early July and not endanger his chances of qualifying for the Chase. But even though Martin has shown that it's still possible for a driver to take an off week and still remain in contention under the current format, not many other drivers would be willing to take the risk.

"That would be a huge gamble to take a week off. A huge gamble," said Carl Edwards, another former Martin teammate. "... Having a kid, that's a pretty big deal. I don't think people are going to kick it on the porch and watch TV. Unless you're having childbirth or something like that, I'd imagine people are going to be at all of the races."

It's happened in the Busch series, where some moonlighting Cup drivers -- like Kyle Busch and Greg Biffle last season -- have remained in title contention without making the maximum number of starts. Martin's example might make it easier for a contending driver to skip a start due to injury, rather than force himself to complete the first few laps to qualify for points for that race. But the margin for error remains very narrow.

"It's a hard thing to do," Burton said. "[Martin] has had great racecars and run really well and hasn't had any catastrophic problems. When you do that, you teeter on the edge. One bad race puts you in a place where you're not in the Chase for sure."

And there are other factors to consider, like the sponsors that pay not only to have their logos plastered all over racecars, but also to have those vehicles driven by the top names in the sport. Gordon points out that Martin is in a unique situation, one where primary sponsor U.S. Army was willing to split the seat, and where Ginn Racing wanted Martin's name recognition badly enough to allow him to race part time.

"I think when you get to the point in your career where Mark has, then yes, you consider it. I think when you're in the prime of your career and you've made a commitment to your team and sponsors, I think that's when it gets really tricky and tough to juggle," Gordon said.

"Your sponsors, in order to get them to commit the dollars it takes to be competitive these days, it's very difficult to convince them that you're not going to have your lead driver every single weekend. I credit Ginn racing and the U.S. Army for working that out. I think it's amazing what they've done. Only a team like that can do that. They didn't have a Mark Martin before that, and they needed a Mark Martin to get them to the next level, and they were willing to bend the norm to do that."

The more Martin succeeds, the more other teams may be willing to do the same thing.

"This sport is trendy," Burton said. "This sport is always monkey see, monkey do. By Mark doing it and doing it well, it will open sponsors' minds to it, it will open drivers' minds to it, it will open car owners' minds to it the same way Jeff Gordon opened car owners' minds to hiring a guy without a lot of this kind of experience. Now the trendy thing to do is hire a guy with no experience. That's just how the sport works."