DAYTONA BEACH — The race track has teased him, tempted him to dream and mockingly taunted him to give it another try.
Mark Martin has made 53 career starts at Daytona International Speedway. He has yet to win a race here.
Martin has two top-10 finishes in his last seven Daytona starts, but the Big One still eludes him. It is about the only notch the Daytona region resident needs on a fabled career that dates to 1981.
After three days of testing last week, Martin will be back in February, ready for another run. At a just-turned -53 (Jan. 9), he is energized by new faces surrounding him. And some old ones, too.
Martin moves over from Hendrick Motorsports to Michael Waltrip Racing under a two-year deal announced in November. Martin replaces David Reutimann, who was released from MWR.
Signing one of NASCAR's storied graybeards is a huge get for Michael Waltrip's team. (So was signing Clint Bowyer, formerly with Richard Childress Racing.) Martin will run a limited schedule, terms of engagement that suit him perfectly.
"Do you see this big old smile on my face? Yeah, buddy, I'm tell you, I'm thrilled," Martin said after the first day of testing. "I'm back to the schedule that I ran in '07 and '08. I've had a great off?season, had the time of my life with Hendrick Motorsports and made friends for life there. But this is a new challenge from an organization standpoint, a lot of new faces, and then a lot of guys I've worked with before. I couldn't believe it when I walked through the shop the first time. You can't believe how many people I've worked with before who are at MWR now.
"And obviously I was in a position where I got to choose the races and how many. So it's just exactly where I want to be in life right now. I'm expecting to do a lot of smiling this year."
Martin's resume is packed with great stuff: 830 Cup starts in 29 years, 40 victories and 438 Top 10s. He has also finished second in the points standings five times, reflective of the same buzzard's luck he has had at Daytona.
What would finally winning the Harley J. Earl Trophy, presented to the Daytona 500 champ, mean to him, he was asked.
"Not sure what it would mean," Martin said. "You've got to check with my boss, Michael Waltrip. You know, when I think about that, I have different thoughts. One of the thoughts is if it happened this year, it might be a life changer for me, and then it might not, I don't know. Certainly it would be an incredible experience. I'm just proud to have an opportunity to be in it again."
gdiaz@tribune.com Read George Diaz's blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/enfuego
Kenseth owes Junior
The best story from testing at Daytona involves a beard and a bet.
Matt Kenseth was among the invited guests for a New Year's Eve '70s party at Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s house. In the heat of the festive moment, Junior bet Kenseth that he couldn't keep a beard he had grown — a Fu-Manchu thing, in honor of the party — when everybody reconvened at Daytona for testing.
Game on, Kenseth said.
The boys bet $2,500.
Only Kenseth came to Daytona with a lame three-day stubble and tried to pass that off as a "beard."
"Pay up," Junior said.
"It looked really stupid, but I hate losing any money and he kept upping the money and upping the money, so finally I said, 'OK,', but I checked first to make sure I didn't have any photos or anything," Kenseth said, " And then I got a call, oh, yeah, Monday. 'By the way, you've got to do a photo here and you've got to do this interview and do a photo shoot there.' So anyway, so I guess I lost. Although this technically should count. It's three days' old, two days."
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