Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Martin set for another good run in Las Vegas

Last weekend, NASCAR took advantage of the leap year by giving its drivers a rare weekend off.

But a weekend off is subjective. Most drivers found themselves near a track, studying, working, trying to improve their cars or get the thrill of racing.

Not a true weekend off.

There's never any true time away from the track for a successful driver, says NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Mark Martin.

"If you're successful in this business, it's every day," Martin said earlier this week. "No matter if you're a driver, owner, crewman, it doesn't matter. If you're successful in this thing, it sucks you in every single day."

But it's that sacrifice that helped Martin win the inaugural Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, back in 1998, at a time when not only Las Vegas, but the cookie-cutter track in general, was a fairly new concept in NASCAR racing.

And instead of taking his offseason, well, off, Martin came out to the Las Vegas track, tested, and found what was right for him and his team to come out and win at LVMS.

One of Martin's most successful seasons was in 1998, when he finished second in the Winston Cup standings, 364 points behind Jeff Gordon.

In addition to the inaugural Las Vegas win, Martin's team also won the second- year races at Texas and California.

And, in this year of change when, in a sense, every race is an inaugural one, Martin said the attitude in his garage strikes him as similar to that from six years ago.

"When I go to the racetrack and work with my team, it feels a lot like it did in 1998," Martin said. "Working with these guys, they're young, energized, and excited, and I'm hoping that this year will bring those same kinds of results."

Martin's toughest competition will likely come from his Roush Racing teammates, who have had all but a stranglehold on success at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Four of the six LVMS races have been won by Roush drivers, including Matt Kenseth's one win last year in his championship season. Martin also won a Busch series race at Las Vegas in 1999.

Martin said that any success that the Roush drivers had at Las Vegas was coincidental.

"We went there, ran well, and beat everybody based on hitting the right setup. That's really how we run those races," Martin said. "It wasn't something that Roush Racing handed to us, 'Here, this is what you need to go win,' the teams, the drivers, the crew chiefs went to work... We don't have any special knowledge about the Vegas racetrack versus any other racetrack."

But he also said he expects his teammates to perform well in Sunday's race, citing Jeff Burton's two wins at LVMS and local Kurt Busch's consistent runs at his home track.

This season, though, could throw the Roush drivers a curveball with new tires and spoilers on the Cup series cars. In a sense, he said, it's a whole new LVMS from the one that he and other Roush drivers have been successful at in the past.

Adjusting to the new setup, and doing so better than anyone else, is the key to success.

"The biggest challenge I see is the same challenge that we had when we went there for the inaugural race, that is to beat everybody through the corners," Martin said.

"If we can do that, we'll be able to contend to win that thing. That's a tall order. You've got a lot of smart people trying to all do the same thing. That's really what it all boils down to, can we figure out a way to make our car go through the corners faster than everybody else."

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