NASCAR great Mark Martin pilots winner on track, in air

Jeff Gluck | USA TODAY Sports

Mark Martin parks his jet about 20 feet from the kitchen counter.

Martin, the ageless NASCAR driver, scoops microwaved brown rice into his mouth as he prepares for his latest journey: flying himself to a race in Michigan.

His comfort zone is a large airplane hangar at the Concord (N.C.) Regional Airport, adjacent to the runway and equipped like a luxury home, mahogany wood floors included. There's an upstairs bedroom, a living room with comfortable couches and a TV.

There are no walls between the kitchen, where Martin sits, and his shiny 2-year-old Citation CJ4.

"It's stupid," Martin says. "It's absolutely stupid. Don't let anyone ever try to justify the costs of owning a plane. ... But it sure is convenient."

Martin invited USA TODAY Sports to come along for his flight to Michigan, a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life of one of the sport's greats. A well-respected veteran whose career has spanned parts of 31 seasons in the Cup series, Martin is viewed as somewhat of a racing sage by his peers. He has 40 Cup wins and 49 Nationwide Series wins to go with five championships in the now-defunct IROC series. Though he has never won a Cup title or a Daytona 500, he has a record five runner-up finishes in the season standings.

A man known for being able to keep up with the times, Martin has a passion for rap music and a presence on Twitter and is an early devotee of Vine. Yet the real secret to his long-term success likely lies in keeping himself physically competitive — the 54-year-old routinely shares his regimen with his Twitter followers.

"If you look at the way he has treated his body, it tells you that this guy likes a challenge," says Jeff Gordon, Martin's former teammate at Hendrick Motorsports. "He likes to push himself, and he is disciplined. I think that's what gives you longevity in a sport when you have the talent."

His life as a pilot is just one of the changes Martin has seen.

"We used to take a van to Michigan," he says. "Heck, we drove to Riverside (Calif.)! But one year, after we drove to Riverside and I finished fifth, I caught a flight home."

He laughs at the memory, eager to recall his early days in NASCAR. This season, NASCAR introduced its sixth generation Cup series car. Martin has driven and won races in four of them.

"We raced hard but fair," he says of the days going door-to-door with David Pearson, Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip. "The definition of 'fair' has changed. It was, 'May the best man win' back then. You couldn't fight the inevitable of a faster car.

"Now, everyone is so close that you can't pass. And the slow cars now are not nearly as slow."

Yet Martin's experience gives him a connection to today's drivers. Teammates Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr. have been "very kind" about listening to him, Martin says.

During Truex's six-year winless streak — recently broken at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway — Martin helped Truex stay positive.

"He's like, 'You're going to get one,' " Truex said. "Just keep doing what you're doing. You guys are awesome. You're fast. You're doing all the right things. Don't get discouraged when things don't go your way, because you're going to get a win.

"He was right. It's nice to see somebody like that understand what we're going through and give good advice."

'Get with it or get obsolete'

Martin finishes his rice cup and, with a wave of his hand, motions to follow him outside the hangar. A walkie-talkie in hand, he says into the radio, "Concord pick up IFR to ADG."

The radio crackles with sounds foreign to a non-pilot. Martin scribbles notes on a yellow Post-it pad and heads back inside.

Private aviation is expensive, but Martin says he tries to reduce costs. Not only does he prep the plane himself, he often also is the sole pilot (he enlists help to fly after races).

As he prepares for departure, his mind still is on how different racing is these days.

"At Darlington in '83, I finished third and there were only three cars on the lead lap. Fans today would lose their minds if that happened!"

Martin says TV deals "accelerated everything. That sent the sport through the roof, but we had to sell ourselves so strong that it created unrealistic expectations. We couldn't deliver that strong all the time, and it was a vicious cycle: We had to outperform everything we'd done before."

Martin picks up a remote control and silences the country music playing in the background. He hits another button, and the massive hangar door folds upward.

"We used to be able to shake hands with the fans and be nice — but that was when there were 15 or 20 people standing there," Martin says. "When there are 5,000, you physically can't do that anymore. We still give as much time as we did before, but now it's so diluted."

The sponsors require more time too, Martin says, which is why private planes are necessary. Drivers cannot take the time to drive to a track — that would mean the cancellation of appearances, team meetings and other business, he says.

He considers it all part of adapting.

"Get with it or get obsolete," he says. "Everything is an evolution, whether it's managing your time or setting up the race cars."

There was a time when Martin found himself being resistant to the marketing aspect that was sweeping the sport in the mid-1990s. But he quickly learned if he didn't embrace it, it would hurt his on-track performance.

Well-funded cars go faster.

"If I didn't embrace this thing I didn't know anything about, I would have been out of the sport at an early age," he says.

In the early '90s, Martin says he had strong input on his setups. He'd tell the team exactly what kind of springs he wanted to run in the cars. Sometimes, drivers would share information — he recalls doing so with Rusty Wallace.

And now?

"Drivers don't know what goes into the cars no more," he says. "It's too dang complicated. It's all computers that are figuring out what to put in there. Back in the day, we just dreamed something up and tried it."

As Martin backs the plane out of the hangar, two more passengers emerge: Jeff Burton and his son, Harrison. Burton and Martin, longtime friends and competitors, occasionally share a ride to the track.

Martin eyes the suddenly darkening skies.

"We might get a bump coming out!" he yells to the group.

"It'd be a lot safer to go around it," Burton offers.

"I'll do my best to avoid it," Martin says. "Other people fly right through that stuff, but I don't like to do that."

Martin's father, stepmother and half-sister died in 1998 when a plane piloted by the elder Martin crashed. Martin isn't afraid of flying but says bad weather "scares me really bad."

"I'm scared of snakes, too," he says with a shrug. "Everybody has their fears."

Martin climbs into the pilot's seat and instructs a news reporter to buckle into the co-pilot's seat. The Citation rockets down the runway, and Martin gently guides it skyward. Almost immediately, controllers in nearby Charlotte are telling Martin about the weather.

"I've got a choice for you, Four Mike," the controller says, referring to Martin's tail number (N4M). "There are two extreme cells off to your right, but there's a gap about 4 or 5 miles wide. In five minutes, if you think you can take that turn, let me know."

Martin points to the radar screen, which shows the plane headed toward a line of bright red with yellow behind it. There's an opening in the line, but it's not much.

At 14,000 feet, the plane seems to edge along the border of the storm. Martin keeps eyeing it, then points. Between the black clouds, there's a gap that looks like the walls of the Grand Canyon. Martin tells the controllers he's going to "flip through the red gap."

"I see it," he says. "There it is."

"I'm glad Arlene's not here," Martin says of his wife of 28 years. "This makes me a little nervous. It's going to be a little tricky."

Martin gets to the gap, then banks right. All visibility is gone.

The unpleasant bumps last a few more minutes, but then Martin gestures out the window. "There's the tops of the clouds right there," he says.

It's smooth sailing, and Martin is ready to talk racing again. Martin previously has said he will not return to Michael Waltrip Racing's No. 55 car next year (he is scheduled to drive 24 Cup races in the car this year and will skip Daytona this weekend as Waltrip fills in), but he declined to say anything about his plans beyond spending time with Arlene, 59, son Matt, 21, and four stepchildren.

Martin says he "got stung real, real bad" in 2005, when his desire to step away from a 36-race Cup schedule got portrayed as a retirement tour. At the time, he had a verbal agreement to run in NASCAR's Truck Series, he says, but "it didn't pan out." Meanwhile, his ideal situation — a part-time Cup ride where he could skip the races he didn't want to run — appeared at Ginn Racing.

"The word 'retirement' wasn't really something I even said," he says. "A lot of people just didn't understand, and the media kept asking me what I was going to do.

"I answered too soon about the Trucks. I didn't have a contract yet. Then I didn't end up doing it, and people started saying I was a waffler and a flip-flopper."

Martin winces at the memory. His tone turns to anger.

"Look, call me dumb or stupid if you want – I am stupid, doggone it!" he says. "But I don't like to be called something I'm not."

Martin says he'll be "very, very guarded" when talking about next year. Certainly, there are team owners who would be interested in his services — but it's a long way until 2014.

"I'm not ready (to retire) yet," he says. "I can tell you what I'd like to do, but until I know for sure, I'm not going to."

Still racing old-school

Far below the plane — now cruising at 32,000 feet — the clouds have broken up. With a clear path to a small airport in Adrian, Mich., Martin turns reflective.

The way drivers race today, he admits, "does bother me deep down inside." The Mark Martin Way — sort of an unwritten code of racing respectfully — has been abandoned at times, even by Martin.

There's a core group of drivers who race each other in the old school manner, Martin says, naming Burton, Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman as examples. But even his friends end up wronging each other in today's NASCAR.

The double-file restarts and lucky dogs and difficulty passing have taken some of the fun away.

"I can't tell you how many times Matt Kenseth has apologized to me the last few years, but it's not because he did something wrong," Martin says. "He had to do it. We all do. It's a bad situation to have to race that way, but you do what you have to do because that's what everybody around you does."

Martin says he used to always "man up to my mistakes" on the track, but that's harder to do now. When the whole field is three- and four-wide on restarts, Martin says, it's hard to even know if a driver did something wrong.

He begins to compare today's lack of respectful racing to the past, but then stops himself.

"When I was younger, I never liked hearing about how good it was back in the day," he says. "So I try not to do that."

Martin also looks at today's NASCAR and says the competition is "about as good as we can have it." He doesn't foresee more "rapid evolution."

"We went through an explosion and then we went through a slight decline," he says. "We might be on a slow, gradual increase in popularity now, but I don't see an explosion.

"But that's not a bad thing. The fact we can maintain is good, because we outgrew ourselves in the first place."

For years, he felt there weren't enough young drivers capable of doing the job. Now, noting drivers such as Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, Jeb Burton (Jeff Burton's nephew) and Chase Elliott, Martin is convinced otherwise.

"It is kind of amazing how it works when there's a changing of the guard," he says. "Not many guys will retire for what seems like forever, and then a bunch of them move on within a few years. We'll have a new wave coming in soon."

The clouds below have disappeared, replaced by squares of farmland. Martin smiles.

"I know it's 2013 and there has been a lot of innovation, but flying is still one of the most amazing things on the planet," he says. "The fact I can take off and in 25 minutes be eight miles above the earth — without supervision or a babysitter — is pretty phenomenal. It's almost like having your own private spaceship.

"It's incredible to be able to do it and to have the freedom to do it. The whole thing is awesome."

Martin is notorious for not wanting to talk about his legacy, but in the air seems a good time to ask. What would he think about someday making the NASCAR Hall of Fame?

"If it happens in my lifetime and I'm still in good health, it would bring me to my knees," he says. "But there are a lot of people who need to go in before me, and I know hardware has a lot to do with it — and I don't have the hardware a lot of them do."

He guides the plane to a soft landing and parks near a small terminal. A pickup arrives to take him to the track, but he first walks over to about 20 fans hoping for autographs.

When everyone is satisfied, he climbs into the truck. Mark Martin, a man of many eras, has another race to run.

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck