From Fanhouse.com -
"I'm going to feel like hell tomorrow because I ain't going to sleep much tonight,'' Martin said on Saturday night. "When I'm pumped up driving fast race cars, I certainly don't feel 50.''
He's far from the sunset of his career and proved it under the lights on the 1.5-mile track.
From Chicago Tribune online -
The close-cropped stubble on his head contains as much salt as pepper, and the wrinkles run across Mark Martin's face like long-ago dried-up riverbeds. And for a while, twilight racing had a far less poetic meaning, semi-retirement leaving him with a loose grip on the track.
So it was with unmistakable giddiness that a man a half-century old took to the radio early in the LifeLock.com 400 on Saturday, his Chevrolet efficiently chopping through traffic and turning the Chicagoland Speedway's 1.5-mile tri-oval into a veritable senior circuit.
"This is easy, bud," Martin told crew chief Alan Gustafson.
He spoke far, far too soon, as double-file restart dueling extinguished his well-earned lead and then returned it to him, all in the final 50 laps.
"Rick Hendrick, he wouldn't quit," Martin said of the team owner who coaxed him back to full-time driving this year. "I was persuaded to do it. And I can't believe what an idiot I would have been. I had no idea it could be this much fun. The whole thing has been beyond my dreams."
- Tony Stewart on Mark Martin
No comments:
Post a Comment