Martin finds himself odd man out ... again

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There was the 46-point penalty that cost him the championship in 1990, and the 89-point penalty that effectively took him out of the title hunt 12 years later. But all the heartache of Mark Martin's star-crossed career was crystallized Sunday, when the Daytona 500 he never should have been in somehow got away.

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It was the ultimate twist of the knife, a swallowed yellow flag as cars crashed and tumbled and burned on the final lap at Daytona International Speedway, a delay that allowed Kevin Harvick to slip by on the high side and win the sport's biggest race.

Forget all those warnings against racing back to the flag. Forget freezing the field. Instead, 185,000 people witnessed a judgment call that will be debated among race fans for years.

And the odd man out, as usual, was Martin, who was supposed to have raced at Daytona for the final time last year and slipped into semi-retirement with an 0-for-43 record at NASCAR's most famous track. But then he signed a part-time deal with new team owner Bobby Ginn, and then he returned to a speedway he seemed so relieved to walk away from, and then he found himself in the lead with one lap to go.

It was only a setup to a cruel finish.

Martin swerved his No. 01 car left and right to block the advances of Kyle Busch. But he couldn't stop Harvick, flying by in the outside lane, and pulling almost nose-to-nose as cars behind them began to wiggle and slide. Everyone braced for a caution flag that never came, and Harvick had the few feet he needed to glide by and win by inches.

Officially, the race ended under green. A series spokesman said the caution flag didn't come out until the No. 07 car of Clint Bowyer began rolling up the racetrack, a burning husk of a Chevrolet that eventually came to rest in the infield grass. By that time, Harvick was on his way to Victory Lane. And NASCAR's nebulous system of justice had denied Martin once again.

"That's at NASCAR's discretion, to decide when they want to end the race. They kept it going for certainly longer than they could have for the best result for Mark," said Jack Roush, Martin's former car owner. "But they wanted to see it go as long as it could, and I think throwing the caution wouldn't have affected the number of cars that would have been wrecked or what happened in the end. So I can see NASCAR's position. But there was a dynamic in regard to what took place, and Mark was the loser again."

He had every right to complain. He had every right to climb out of his U.S. Army car, slam the roof, and scream about how NASCAR had done it to him again. Instead he showed the same class and humility he's shown in the face of so many similar situations over the course of his otherwise illustrious career.

Like the NASCAR penalty assessed to his No. 6 Roush car for an illegal but non-performance-enhancing carburetor spacer in 1990, which cost him 46 points in a championship race he would lose by 26 to Dale Earnhardt. Or the penalty for a too-wide spring coil that cost him 25 points in his pursuit of eventual champion Tony Stewart in 2002. Sunday, he blamed the fact that he didn't have anyone pushing him. He blamed himself for not getting the job done.

But he didn't blame NASCAR officials. Over the semi-privacy of team radio, immediately after crossing the finish line, he sounded astonished that a caution had not frozen the field. "I can't believe they waited," he told his team. But later, despite given every opportunity, he steadfastly refused to point a finger at race control.

"Nobody wants to hear a grown man cry," Martin said, a steely edge in his voice. "That's what it is, and I'm not going to cry about it. This is what it is, and that's it. That's the end. They made the decision, and that's what we're going to live with."

It's yet another chapter in the story of NASCAR's tragic hero, a driver unfortunately defined more by what he hasn't won that what he has. Somehow, that makes him more endearing than if he had 10 Nextel Cups in his trophy case. Somehow, near misses like Sunday and the way he reacts to them make Mark Martin seem more human.

"That's what I love about this sport. It's hard," he said. "It's driven me for almost 30 years. That's why I was here today. I had the choice whether or not to race the Daytona 500. I wanted a shot at it, and these guys gave me a shot."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.