Montoya set sail from there. He led 116 laps, including 74 of the first 80 circuits, before he got caught speeding on pit road.
“Penalty on the 42 for speeding,” Martin’s spotter, Jeremy Brickhouse said on the radio. Mark made the pass for the lead right in front of the pit stall of John Andretti—right in front of me.
“He just consistently through a run would drive away from the field. I don't know that if he ever got passed, if it might have changed things a little bit,” Tony Stewart said about Montoya after the race.
“You’re the leader,” crew chief Alan Gustafson said just seconds later. Mark was out front and he had clean air. If the race went caution free it was going to be a fuel mileage race. The last time Martin and Johnson got caught up in a fuel mileage race? Michigan.
But, a caution from Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s engine issues brought the field back together for one final restart. As any fan but a Mark Martin fan, you might have been excited to see the field bunched up and fighting for the win at Indianapolis. I, however, could barely breathe.
Johnson squeezed Martin heading through turn number two, and cleared him heading down the back straightaway. “I tried to get a good [restart], and it was good, but I needed another three feet to clear him,” Martin said. “If I’d have done that, you know, then the race would have been on.”
For the last fifteen laps it was a back and forth battle between Martin and Johnson. Johnson would beat Martin by a tenth of a second, and Martin would run the next lap faster than Johnson, but in the end the 50-year old Arkansan just couldn’t catch the three time defending Sprint Cup Champion.
“I was beating Jimmie pretty bad off of turn two. I knew that for the last 15 laps for sure. But he was beating me pretty bad off of four,” Martin said.
Mark Martin gave it all he had without wrecking in the final laps of the Brickyard 400 on Sunday
“Geez, was he fast. For an old guy, he had me pretty worried,” Johnson said. “Those last 15 to 20 laps, we had to drive it so hard just to stay ahead of him.”
Martin has a tendency to be just close enough to taste victory, but not close enough to win. After all, he’s finished second in the title run four times and even finished second in the Daytona 500 in 2007. He can now add another second place finish to his Indy resume. “I'd love to have won the race,” he said. “But I'm very grateful to have had a chance at it. I got beat. I didn't get her done. But I gave it my heart. So did my race team. I'm grateful for it.”
He was the first car back to pit road after the race, but not the first car back to the start finish line on lap 160
Does he ever get tired of being the runner-up? I doubt it. His answer, “It's better than 42nd, man.” Much better.
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I’ll have some more Indy stories and memories from the weekend that was. It’s all still a whirlwind of colors, smells, sights and sounds to me, but I am happy to have had the opportunity to do what I did.
Thanks go out to WCPO and sports director John Popovich for hooking me up with the credentials to cover the race with the access that I had. Additional thanks go to Mark Martin and his Hendrick Motorsports team for making my job as a fan easy, as well as Benny Ertel and Bart Starr who were willing enough to talk to me for a few minutes on Saturday morning. I’ll have more either later today or hopefully sometime tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading.
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