Hendrick Motorsports' Mark Martin wants to race, not crash, in final title races
Hendrick Motorsports' Mark Martin is second in the Chase For The Sprint Cup standings heading into Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway.
// Mark Sluder, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – Hendrick Motorsports driver Mark Martin said Friday he’s not heartbroken over slipping further behind teammate Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR’s Chase For The Sprint Cup standings, but he’d “rather go down fighting than flipping.”
Martin crashed and flipped with one lap to go in last weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway, falling 184 points behind Johnson with three races remaining.
“Definitely no heartbreak whatsoever,” said Martin, who has finished second in the Cup standings four times. “But Talladega did rub because I’d rather get beat than turn over, you know what I mean? I want to go down racing.
“But you know what? We raced. We raced all day. We raced like we just couldn’t be in a wreck. And I was in one I didn’t even see. I never even knew I was going to be in that wreck until I was turning over.”
Martin has had a stellar season in his return to full-time Cup racing, winning five times. He won’t be disappointed with that number, even though he’s likely to fall short in the title hunt.
“Obviously, the performance of the 48 [of Johnson] has been phenomenal,” Martin said. “We gave it a good fight. But we haven’t quite matched his performance, although we gave him a pretty good run until Martinsville and Charlotte. That’s all we can do.”
Martin finished 17th at Charlotte and eighth at Martinsville, while Johnson was first and second, respectively. And then Martin was 28th at Talladega, while Johnson persevered to a sixth-place finish.
“I didn’t take this job to go try to get a championship trophy,” Martin said of the Hendrick organization he joined this season. “Doggone, it’s worked out pretty good. We’ve been in position. It still could happen. The race is still on for the top six positions, and we’re going to race.”
