Mark Martin takes the 2009 Southern 500 at age 50 | Hendrick Motorsports, 40 NASCAR wins in 40 years

Editor’s note: This is the tenth in a 40-part series highlighting 40 of the greatest wins in the history of Hendrick Motorsports to finish its 40th anniversary season. A new installment will be released each day from Nov. 22, 2024 through New Year’s Eve. Votes were taken from Hendrick Motorsports employees as well as representatives of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Racing Insights with all unanimous selections being ushered in automatically. The remaining wins were deliberated and decided upon by a small panel.  

CONCORD, N.C. - Rick Hendrick didn't self-start a race team and turn it into the most dominant organization in the history of NASCAR by taking, "no," for an answer very often. 

So, when it came to persuading Mark Martin, a veteran NASCAR wheelman with a career's worth of success and seemingly his full-time days behind him, Hendrick had to stay persistent. 

And by 2007, if any driver had the clout to refuse an offer from Hendrick, maybe it was Martin, who already had 44 wins to his name in a career that began all the way back in 1981. Martin had run his 19th-consecutive and final full-time season for Roush Racing in 2006 and was in the first of two part-time years with Dale Earnhardt Inc. 

The relentless questions about and the pressure to win a Cup Series championship, one that would elude him throughout his decorated career, had grown too great and Martin was left with no desire to compete on a full-time basis. So, when DEI offered Martin the chance to run a 24-race schedule in 2007 and fill the rest of the slate with starts from Regan Smith and Aric Almirola, it was just the opportunity he was looking for. 

But that didn't stop Hendrick from beginning his sales pitch. 

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“We were really fast but we weren’t winning races,” Martin recalled in a phone interview last week. “I was 49 years old. It just seemed like my time was up.

“But Rick called me and said, ‘Hey man, I’m really interested in you coming to drive this number five car for me.’ So, I said, ‘I’ll come run 24 races,’ and he was like, ‘Nope, you’ve got to run them all.’ I said, ‘No thanks, then.’

“A few months would go by and then he’d call me back. ‘Man, I would like to have you come drive this five car.’ And I’d say, ‘I’d love to, for 24 races.’ And he’s say, ‘Nah.’” 

The chase continued into 2008 at which point Hendrick called Martin with a compromise; run full time in the 2009 season and he was free to run 24 races in 2010 and 2011. 

"I said, 'I have to go home and discuss it with my wife,' because she’d had it with my schedule," Martin said. "We talked it over and I told her I really wanted to win one more time since ’05 was my last win. I wanted to experience that one more time. So, we decided to do it."

Paired with crew chief Alan Gustafson, Martin came into a new opportunity with a rejuvenated mindset. 

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“I had a lot of fun in ’07 and ’08 not chasing a championship,” Martin said. “Chasing the championship in my Roush years had sucked the life out of me. Once I was able to race and not worry about points, it brought the joy of racing back. So, when I slipped back into the five car, I almost didn’t consider the championship. I didn’t give a flip, I just wanted to win races and let the points do what they do.” 

But even at 50 years old, there were growing pains for Martin and the No. 5 bunch. A 16th-place run in the 2009 DAYTONA 500 to open the year was followed with back-to-back 40th-place showings at Auto Club Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway. 

It started to turn with a sixth-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway in the following race and after two more top 10s, the team visited victory lane at Phoenix Raceway in a dominant performance. Martin also won the pole and led the most laps (157) that weekend. 

It was just the turning point the No. 5 team needed. 

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Just three weeks later, the NASCAR Cup Series headed to Darlington Raceway for the Southern 500, a crown jewel event that Martin had last won back in 1993, 16 years earlier. 

The 2009 edition would be an eventful one, to say the least. A total of 17 caution flags flew, matching a Southern 500 record. A recent repave the year prior had also helped minimize tire wear at a track infamous for chewing up rubber. 

Martin rolled off 12th but chaos ensued nearly from the beginning with the average green-flag run lasting only around 16 laps. It was apparent early that strategy would rule the day as the field mixed four-tire, two-tire and no-tire stops. 

It didn't look promising for the No. 5 team, even late as Martin ran 14th with 78 laps to go. He also made contact with the No. 77 car, sending Sam Hornish spinning down the frontstretch. A caution was avoided but came out six laps later anyway as Greg Biffle spun out. 

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Martin, who'd lost track position under the previous yellow flag by taking four tires, took gas only to jump up to sixth place. He'd lost one spot to then-rookie Joey Logano and was settled into seventh when the 15th caution waved for debris with 48 laps left. On the edge of the fuel window, Gustafson gambled and kept Martin on the race track.

“In practice we were three tenths of a second a lap off. We were missing speed. The balance was OK but I went into the race thinking we were going to be a mid-pack car,” Martin recalled. “Alan, like he did often, used brilliant strategy to get us into the lead. We had inferior tires but it didn’t matter. He was smart enough to take that chance. That’s what I always liked about Alan, he wasn’t a follower.”

Biffle led the most laps with 117 on the evening and in terms of the lead, the Hendrick Motorsports stable had largely been an afterthought up to that point. But six other cars stayed out under the final caution with teammate Jimmie Johnson, who'd fought his own battle of attrition that weekend, lining up in second. Johnson crashed in qualifying and started 42nd in a backup car, dead last in the field. 

Passing for the lead had been a chore all evening long and Martin, who suddenly had clean air on the hood of his highlighter yellow, Cheez-Itz Chevrolet, somehow held the seven-time champion at bay. Johnson stalked and pushed hard into the corner but Martin was better on exit. Two more cautions would fly, one after a dustup between Jamie McMurray and Brian Vickers and a second after Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun down the front stretch, but Johnson, try as he might, could not find a way around. 

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As the laps ticked down, instead of pushing both cars to the end of their fuel loads, Johnson came on the radio and conceded, allowing Martin to nurse it to the end. 

“I remember that Jimmie made a pretty hard push at us and then he got to the point where he came over the radio and said, ‘Hey, tell (Martin) I can’t pass him, just make sure they make it to the end,'" Gustafson said. "It was fun to battle hard like they did and then it was really standup of Jimmie to make sure he didn’t torpedo both of us.”

For the No. 5 car, it would be the second of four wins in 12 events and five over the course of 2009. While Martin may have started the year without any worry of points, suddenly, the team was a legit contender and stayed there until the end, ultimately finishing second to Johnson.

The home that Martin found was enough to convince him to run two more full-time seasons with Hendrick Motorsports but the team couldn't quite replicate the success of that first campaign. After his three-year stint, Martin departed, running his final NASCAR Cup Series race in 2013 with Stewart-Haas Racing. 

Still, that three-year window left a lasting impression on both Martin and Gustafson, who just finished off his 20th season as a crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports. 

“Every win is special, but I always really appreciated Mark’s perspective on things because of all he’d been through in his career and all the success he’d had,” Gustafson said. “He was amazing. An amazing driver. And he just really appreciated the opportunity to win those races and I think that was always significant to me. He always helped me understand as a guy who’d been through all of it, the respect he had for those opportunities to win races was super cool.” 

“Every time I’d come home from the shop (wife) Arlene would say, ‘You’re always smiling real big when you come home,’” Martin concluded. “It was such an incredible honor to be treated like I was in that organization, from Rick all the way down. Everyone treated me so respectfully and the boys on the five car were so excited to have me drive their car. It was such an honor to have great, quality people that were so excited to have you there. Just an amazing experience. Life changing. I don’t want to sound like hyperbole but my time at Hendrick Motorsports really changed my life and really put the icing on the cake for my career.”