Mark Martin hopes third-quickest qualifying lap leads to progress on race day
Mark Martin will start third in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
INDIANAPOLIS – Mark Martin backed up a third-place Brickyard 400 qualifying effort with the fifth-best lap on the speed chart during final practice Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
For a guy who has one top-10 finish in his last 10 races, it is a sign that things might be starting to turn around for the Hendrick Motorsports team as it heads into the 160-lap race Sunday.
“You have to take making progress as an encouragement, and hopefully if you can continue that, you can get where you want to be,” Martin said after his qualifying run. “So I’m certainly feeling good about the progress that we’re making right now.”
Martin was expected to challenge for the Sprint Cup title this year after finishing second in points a year ago. He was as high as third in points after the third race of the year and sixth in points after a fifth-place finish in April at Talladega. He remained in the top 12 until the July 3 race in Daytona, where an accident resulted in a 28th-place finish and dropped him to 13th in the point standings. He finished 15th in the series’ last race (two weeks ago at Chicago) and fell another spot in the points to 14th, 37 behind 12th.
“We still have work to do,” Martin said. “It looks really good this weekend, but I don’t think that you can judge the rest of the schedule based on one good [day], two days’ worth of really good. And we have a lot of work in front of us.
“We’re working really hard, harder than we ever have. So that’s what we can do. We can control that and that’s what we’re doing. We’re really focused and dug in.”
They will need to remain focused if they want to get back into the top 12.
“Even though the results may not have really shown it, I’ve been seeing more and more speed in the race car,” Martin said. “I was very pleased at Chicago with the gains that we had made and [it] appeared yesterday as significant gains again this week.
“We have a lot more work in front of us. So we’re excited about getting back in contention here.”
The only issue Martin could have in the Brickyard 400 is whether or not to take a chance for a better finish while risking potential points in the process. A two-tire stop might be good for track position but it could also give Martin a worse finish than a more conservative call.
“We’ll run our typical, normal race,” Martin said. “I don’t think that we will throw all-or-nothing, Hail Mary, which we don’t normally much anyway. So I think we’ll run our typical calculated race, I would assume that’s what [crew chief] Alan [Gustafson’s] strategy would be.
“And we would love to be in contention to win, but we also are just going to also be pleased to be running better than we have, making progress.”
Martin will be making his 17th career start at Indy, where he has finished seventh or better in four of the last five races.
