Mark Martin represented the very best of stock car racing. He won 40 Cup Series races and acquired millions of fans with his dominant driving style. For as much as he was loved for his stellar performances on the track, he was also loved for being a gentleman on it. One of the competitors who admired him for the same is Kyle Petty.
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Richard Petty’s son expressed in a 2012 interview that Martin was the cleanest driver that he has raced against. He used an interesting analogy to explain why. “Many years ago, there used to be bears at the fair, and you could go in and wrestle the bear,” he said. “And if you’d just sit there, the bear would just sit there.”
“But the harder you wrestled the bear, the harder the bear wrestled you – and that’s the way Mark was. If you raced him clean, he’d race you clean. And if you wanted to race him dirty, Mark could come back, and he could put a bumper to you and give you exactly what you gave him.”
None could have put it better than Petty did. Watching Martin’s earlier races makes it obvious that he always wanted to be ethical. He gave faster drivers plenty of room to pass, knowing that there would be chances to get them back fair and square. At the same time, he was never someone to be pushed over.
Denny Hamlin’s critical opinion of Mark Martin’s driving style
The Next Gen car has introduced a level of parity across the field that makes passing an extremely difficult task. Especially on short tracks. Would Martin’s style of letting competitors simply pass with the hope of getting them back later work in the modern world of NASCAR? Denny Hamlin does not think so.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver came under heavy scrutiny after a race in Pocono last year for racing harshly against Kyle Larson. The driver said, defending himself, that even someone like Martin would have to rethink his driving style with the way the sport is currently, and gave reason for the fandom to think.
He said, “Even Mark Martin would have to adjust his style in this type of car because of the days of the gentleman letting the guys go, and you will just go and get them later. It’s just a different game these days. I wish we could go back to those days, but that is not where we are at. You have to adapt to where you are at. You adapt, or you die.”
The strong reasoning in Hamlin’s words cannot be ignored. Maybe Martin wouldn’t have been such a gentleman driver if he had been put in one of the Next Gen cars. But then again, there are plenty of drivers who race clean every week and still manage to win races. Ryan Blaney, for one, is generally considered a class act and he won the championship in 2023.
