“Earnhardt’s Talent Is Underappreciated”: Mark Martin on What Makes a NASCAR Driver Truly Great

What makes a great NASCAR driver? In a recent episode of Behind the Catch Fence, NASCAR veteran Mark Martin named that one quality that makes a driver better than everyone else. Needless to say, he gave the example of the great Dale Earnhardt.

Earnhardt achieved racing immortality through a plethora of accolades including 7 NASCAR championships and  76 wins at the Cup level.

But what made him different from the rest? Mark Martin said that in the highly competitive arena of NASCAR, it is difficult for someone to be as dominant as Dale Earnhardt was. But still, Earnhardt was able to flaunt his superiority.

Martin explained, “Earnhardt got a lot of good results, but Earnhardt didn’t have a dominant car a whole hell of a lot of the time. So in some ways, Earnhardt’s talent is under-appreciated.”

Dale Earnhardt was known to push the cars he drove, to limits that nobody ever imagined. On top of that, his aggressive style of racing was something that almost all his contemporaries were terrified of. Interestingly, there was a time when this dare-devilish driving style got to Mark Martin himself.

“I was mad” – Mark Martin recalled his tussle with the Intimidator

A few years ago, Mark Martin opened up about the time when Dale Earnhardt decided to go berserk on Martin. Initially, Earnhardt used to race Martin with respect. But there was a time in the mid-90s when Dale Earnhardt decided to mess with Martin.

According to Martin, it was Earnhardt’s way of pushing Martin’s buttons to see how far the latter could go without snapping back. Earnhardt would wait for Martin during the practice laps and as soon as they were door-to-door, Earnhardt would veer to the outside of Martin’s machine and make him go aero-loose.

Things escalated more at a practice session at Michigan when Earnhardt repeated the same thing and, in the process, got loose and wrecked Martin. “I was mad,” said Martin. The next weekend at New Hampshire, Earnhardt did it against but this time, Martin put the wheel on Earnhardt. “That’s all. It was just playing. I wasn’t going to cry to the media, I wasn’t going to complain,” said Martin.