Martin scores season-best runner-up finish in FedEx 400

Being a Mark Martin fan has taught me to be patient, and watch a patient man work his magic. It only took 11 races this year for that patience to finally pay off.

About two months ago I wrote that Mark Martin’s mediocre finishes didn’t tell the entire story of the first few races of the 2011 campaign. (Read it here: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2011/03/opinionmartins-mediocre-finishes-dont.html)

If we needed more proof, Martin jumped out of his car yesterday with a huge smile on his face after finishing runner-up to Matt Kenseth.

Martin leads Kenseth late in the FedEx400. Kenseth passed Martin going into turn one at Dover with 32 laps to go, and never looked back, defeating his former Roush Racing teammate by over two seconds. (Getty Images for NASCAR via Yahoo!Sports)

“I always get excited about coming here to race. You know, we had a really fast racecar. Today we finally got a finish,” he said. “Looked like we were going to get 15th again with a really fast racecar. We've had a racecar this good a lot this year. Seems like for some reason or another we wind up in the back of the pack and we just don't have enough to climb our way back to the front.”

Mark Martin fans have been quite vocal about the fact that Martin just doesn’t have what it takes to make it to the front, and Crew Chief Lance McGrew generally gets a lot of the criticism.

Earlier in the race, Martin battled Montoya. It was Montoya's late-race spin that allowed Martin and Crew Chief Lance McGrew to gamble and stay out of the pits under the final caution. (Getty Images for NASCAR via Yahoo! Sports)

But when Juan Pablo Montoya spun out yesterday with 40 to go to bring out the what happened to be the race’s final yellow flag, Mark Martin made the call to stay out, not McGrew. McGrew agreed with Martin on the call though.

“[Martin] brought it up and that's what I wanted to do so when he said it, I said, 'Hell yeah, stay out,’” McGrew said. “Because I felt like everybody was going to pit and our car was so good.”

The ever-humble 52-year-old Martin could have taken all the credit for the call to stay out, but instead he did what he’s always done—given credit to his race team.
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Mark Martin leads a pack of drivers down the back straightaway at Dover during the FedEx 400 (Getty Images for NASCAR via Yahoo! Sports)

“This was a good race for us,” Martin said. “Great call by Lance, great teamwork. We've had great teamwork all year. I'm proud of this race team. I'm proud of these guys.”

And McGrew couldn’t disagree with his driver.

“I think this is a good race team,” he said. “We've managed to scrape together a few finishes with some bad luck, with tearing up some cars, and doing this and doing that. But I don't think you've seen as good as this team can be.

“These guys deserved a good finish because we've worked really hard and we've had some stuff bite us. If it wasn't for the crash [and resultant 36th-place finish] at Texas we'd be pretty solid in the top 10 right now. But we're close, and we had to have a good car to do it.”

Mark Martin fans need to remember the axiom that Martin gave in 2007: “Impatience is a real hard thing to deal with and to work with. Impatience is waste of time. It's a diversion. If you're impatient, you're worrying about things you can't control.”

It’s easy to get impatient with Lance McGrew and some of his calls, but it seems like the tide is turning for Mark Martin.

And that’s something that will get any fan fired up.