From 1989 to 2000, the legendary Mark Martin had 12 consecutive top-10 finishes, 11 of which were inside the top-5s, and all of those were at road courses. When several racers struggle with street circuits, one might wonder how this race veteran was so good at driving on road courses. The man himself spilled the secret in an episode of Behind the Catch Fence.
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Before going into that very subject, questions might arise about how oval track racing is different from road course racing. The basic difference is in the shifting of gears and acceleration. In oval track racing, the drivers need to make wide sweeps, usually to the left. However, in road races, it is not that straightforward. A driver needs to brake, and make left and right turns the magnitude of which ranges from hairpins to mid-sized to sweepers.
Needless to say, all that braking and change in the acceleration comes with a ton of calculated gear shifts. And Martin was a master of that craft.
For Martin, his days of driving dirt roads as a teenager, way before he even got his driver’s license, actually helped him make speed and yet stay out of trouble. “This is funny, but it’s the truth,” said the veteran racer. “I grew up driving dirt roads in Arkansas before I had my driver’s license. And it was just like that I drove as fast as I could go and stay out of the ditch.”
“That’s the same damn thing you do at Sonoma for sure and it’s fairly the same thing you do at The Glen. However, the Watkins Glen was my favorite. It is (the) superspeedway of road courses,” he added.
How did Mark Martin master the road courses?
The answer to Martin’s prowess on road courses lies in the way Martin used clutch-less downshifting, which in itself it is a bit tricky. One needs to blip the throttle and press down the shifter right as the revs crank up and it works best if one is on the brakes, since that helps match the revs.
Martin confessed in an interview from last year, “First of all, I didn’t brake any transmissions. I downshift those things without the clutch. I was a truck driver; I grew up as a truck driver so matching gears were part of it. Another thing we didn’t do is brake engines.”
“We didn’t brake engines, we didn’t brake transmissions, we kept the car running all the time. That was all key(s) but one of the other main keys were, Jack Roush knew what questions to ask,” he added.
Mark Martin was Jack Roush’s first NASCAR driver and Roush knew exactly which buttons to press to help his driver attain greater heights. How he did that?
Well, he never pointed out his mistakes but asked such questions that would automatically have Martin realize what he should do to improve his performance.
