Martin wins record 49th career Nationwide race in Vegas

He’s done this before, trust me.

On Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas, Danica Patrick might have stolen the storylines, but it was 52-year-old Mark Martin who won the Sam’s Town 300 on his own gamble. Martin was running low on fuel, but stretched his car to the end, passing Brad Keselowski on the final lap after Keselowski cut a tire.

“I can’t gloat. If Brad hadn’t of had a tire problem, he looked like he would win,” Martin said. “All I could do is make sure we didn’t run out of gas.”

With the win, Mark Martin extended the mark for most career Nationwide Series victories to 49. Kyle Busch, who is second to Martin with 44 career wins in NASCAR’s second-tier series, wrecked late and finished 30th.

The always humble Martin acknowledged that he’s not too worried about staying ahead of Busch.

“It’s pointless to really talk much about that streak. Kyle will pass me probably by midseason and that will be that,” Martin said. “It’s been a good ride. That record is going to fall. Soon. I am sure it will fall this year.”

But he was sure happy to win, especially since it was the first win for Turner Motorsports, the team that has hired Martin to run four Nationwide races and two Camping World Truck Series races this season.

But if I saw anything on Saturday that expressed why I love Mark Martin, it was this tweet from SBPopOffValve. “Tell you something, if I owned a race team, I'd hire Mark Martin 8 days a week and twice on Sunday,” the tweet read.

Well, I couldn’t have said that any better myself.

And even though Danica Patrick stole a lot of the show by finishing fourth (the highest finish for a woman in a NASCAR event since Patrick made history with her fourth-place finish, the best ever for a woman in a national NASCAR event since Sara Christian finished 5th in 1949) it should be Martin that gets all the praise after the win.

In 2009, his first season at Hendrick Motorsports, Martin won the June race at Michigan after saving enough gas on the final green flag run. By doing the same at Vegas on Saturday, Martin proved that there aren’t many people better than he is at saving fuel.

Now, if he can pull off the win tomorrow, he’ll probably be a little more fired up. And, he’ll be the only person wearing GoDaddy green that the media can pay attention to.