Mark Martin: 51, And Still Kicking Add

Mark Martin may be the Benjamin Button of NASCAR: As everyone else gets older, he seems to get younger.

How else to explain his five wins and runner-up finish in the championship standings last year at age 50?

The old man is in better shape than most of the drivers half his age; you get the feeling that with his intense fitness regimen, he could still be driving 195 at 55.

By the time he eventually retires for good, the avid hip-hop fan may not be listening to rapper Gucci Mane, but Gucci Mane Jr.

So it should come as no surprise then that Martin, now 51, said last week that he’s feeling completely recharged for the upcoming season.

“My battery is charged stronger than ever, coming off the most fun and rewarding year of my life,” he said, black Adidas shoes squeaking as he twitched his feet restlessly against a director’s chair.

Martin said he “didn’t need the season to be over” because things were going so well, but acknowledged he was “just about tired of that points thing.”

That “points thing” had gotten old about halfway through the Chase, when it became clear that eventual champ Jimmie Johnson was beating his competition into submission for another year.

The questions kept coming all the way through Homestead (How would Martin handle the disappointment of finishing second in the points yet again? What did he think about his chances at somehow catching Johnson? Did he know how old he was?) and started to wear on him.

But it was even more difficult early in the season, when Martin nearly dropped out of the top 35 after a string of bad luck and seemed like a longshot for the Chase. When he made it, he said, it was a huge relief.

Now, he credits his mental toughness for helping pull through the hard times.

His approach, he said, was to “stay strong and not let the demons get ya, you know? Because when you let that stuff affect you, then your reaction to things is skewed by that and it can start to be a negative draw on your team and on everything. And eventually you see that in the performance.”

Of course, that kind of wisdom is gained through experience. And even if Martin is feeling as fresh as a 25-year-old, he’s still driving with the mind of a veteran racing scholar.