Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9305300078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
But no matter what you do, no matter how good you are, come Sunday, when the green flag falls, you consign yourself to fickle fortune of racing luck.
And, as with all forms of life, one's fortune is rooted in cycles - the biorhythms of stock car racing.
No one is planning to rush out and write a book about the inner game of stock car racing, but fate often is a popular topic.
In the Winston Cup garage, Mark Martin is perhaps the best driver to expound on the subject of motorsports karma. He was talking about it at Charlotte Motor Speedway the other day because his, at the moment, is bad.
Going into today's Coca-Cola 600, Martin is ninth in points, with six top-10 finishes in 10 races this year, but he has no wins and is saddled with more disappointments than he'd care to remember.
Martin was running away at Atlanta until his engine failed (which happens to be the same scenario for him in last year's Coca-Cola 600). He was nailed by Geoff Bodine's first-lap crash at North Wilkesboro.
At Talladega, where Martin seems to be the only guy who really tries to be a good drafting partner, he was brushed, bumped, shoved and hit by nearly every other car in the lead pack during that wild final lap of the Winston 500. That sent him reeling from third to 12th and cost him 43 Winston Cup points.
"I feel we've been unbelievably unlucky this year," he said. "And I'm a true believer that anything will cycle for you if you wait it out long enough. I'm just at a loss for words for the length of time it's taking this to cycle.
"I'm beginning to want to know when it's going to come back - when we're going to get wins when we don't have the fastest car."
After all, he's often had the fastest car this year but hasn't won.
"When are we going to get gifts?" Martin said. "You know, you do in racing. You always do. The win at Martinsville in 1992 was sort of a gift. It's about time for another one."
Martin is doing great compared to some other Winston Cup drivers. He still has a regular spot in the Winston Cup garage at Charlotte, which is more than can be said for Bill Elliott. By virtue of Elliott's 22nd-place position in Winston Cup points, his team's hauler has been relegated to Charlotte garage's back 40, a gravel lot that sits behind and below the paved lot around the Winston Cup garage.
This is where the bottom dwellers park. These unfortunate competitors always get the worst parking places and the longest walks at NASCAR tracks, and at Charlotte the walk is particularly humiliating. You try pushing a 1,000-pound toolbox on wheels or an engine suspended on an engine hoist uphill over 50 yards of gravel.
Elliott seems to like the privacy, but he does not belong there with the rookies and part-timers.
"We're gaining on it," said Elliott, a firm believer in the cycles of racing.
With his best finish a ninth at Atlanta, though, Elliott still would seem to be stuck at the bottom.
For Martin, fate also is the key factor in winning the Winston Cup championship.
"You can only win that if you win it," Martin said. "My attitude is, `Let me go win a race tomorrow.'
"There was once a day in time when the best car and team generally won the championship. But that's not necessarily the case anymore. A guy with a lot of talent and a good team more often than not surfaces at the front on a consistent basis, but he might not win a championship because he just happens to be the one who got in three wrecks - and not his own wrecks."
For the amount of work these Winston Cup teams put into their cars, you might think the uncertainty of racing would drive them nuts.
But you won't find anyone rushing off to consult a sports psychologist. Stock car racing is far too conservative, far too macho for that. Unless, of course, it would guarantee a win on Sunday. Then they'd fly in the doctor on a chartered jet.
by CNB