Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Mark Martin Interview

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

NASCAR legend Mark Martin joins Kevin Harvick for a memorable conversation about his journey from the ASA racing series to the NASCAR Cup Series. From short track racing to winning 40 career Cup Series races with a memorable run driving for Roush Racing, Martin dives into his beliefs on being loyal and competing against many of the NASCAR greats. He shares behind-the-scenes stories about his teammates, Jack Roush, his opinions on the NASCAR championship format, and so much more. 0:00 - Intro 0:30 - Mark Martin Joins The Show! 3:40 - Path From Short Tracks 10:18 - Time with Jack Roush 25:28 - Developing His Post-Racing Voice 26:49 - Championship Format Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They had to outrun Earnhardt at his peak at Atlanta. The majority of fans won a 36 race championship. You raced for a living, and everything that you did was how you got to the next step. I'd finally had enough. I wanted to leave. When I told him that, he said, well, that's bullshund. Dude, this guy's a racer. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's happy hour.

And this week, we've got Mark Martin, who has pretty much done it all in our sport and been a good friend over the years. Mark, thanks for taking the time today. Hey, man, you're doing some great shows. I appreciate you having me on. Well, it's always fun to talk to guys. What are you doing now? Where are you at? What's on the agenda? You guys just kind of cruise around and have fun, it seems to me. We do. We moved back to Arkansas, and so I'm more centrally located now, making some trips up to Wisconsin to see good old short track racing and hanging out with the fans some there. We're getting ready to go out to Monterey, California and do the IROC, you know, a historical

event out there with IROC and everything's going to be a lot of fun. And then we're headed out to the, you know, northeast up to Rhode Island and going to go up to Maine and see Bentley Warren, the incredible legend. Nobody has more fun than Bentley. I hear. That's what I hear. And you talk about going to these short tracks. Myself and Keelan have been cruising around the country, going to all these different short tracks as well. And, you know, I hear so much about our short track system and, you know, this and that. But we just got back from Colorado. We had 11,300 people there.

And I hear you talk about it all the time. The enthusiasm that is still there for racing, I believe, is overlooked. And now there are a lot of issues with whatever you want to grab onto. But for me, my experience has been our grassroots, hardcore fans, they're still there. They just, they want to have more things to grab onto. What's your opinion of that system currently? Yeah, I think it's short track racing's healthy, grassroots racing. I feel like, as being a fan, I feel like that the dirt bunch really has a great formula,

maybe a little bit better, a little bit more sustainable formula than the pavement guys do. But, you know, pavement late models, what you guys are doing, you and Keelan are doing, you know, are the foundation of my career as well. And they're really where my heart's at. And it's alive and well. You can go to Wisconsin and see racing all nights of the week. It's still amazing up there. Unfortunately, we have lost some venues.

But that's more because the cities have grown up around the racetracks and the property becomes more valuable than, you know, than it is the racetracks. So we're losing some racetracks here and there. And that's, you know, that's a shableness. but short track racing is alive and well. It is. And when you look back at your time in short track racing,

and I'm the same way. I look back and I think, man, and I'm getting a chance to kind of relive it. That passion and love that you have is reminded of why you race and the things that you love about racing. Talk about that time period for you when you were, You were racing, but what was the timing of the break that you got from the short track level to kind of make it into the NASCAR ranks to get your opportunity?

How did all that come about? Well, it really kind of all built up by accidentally winning the ASA rookie of the year. In my senior high school year, we ran enough races to be eligible. and of ASA races because there were a lot of those races at I-70, Springfield, Fort Smith, and stuff like that. So we won the rookie of the year, and lo and behold, Ed Howe gave me a free chassis for the next year. So we built, you know, a better car, and we decided to race out of Batesville, Arkansas, and chase the ASA championship.

And at 19 years old, I won that championship. and back then that'd be like winning it at 12 now, you know. It was very young. We got a lot of attention for it. And I got on a Firestone tire deal. You know, all kinds of, all the parts manufacturers wanted to be on my race car. So we didn't have to buy parts. We didn't have a money sponsor.

Pretty much the only thing we had was the engines, which were pretty expensive at the time. But it didn't take many. A couple of engines a year would do. you know, if you had to, you would be fine. So I parlayed that into moving to Wisconsin, I mean, I'm sorry, moving to Indiana in 79 and kind of getting out on my own,

getting out from under my dad's organization and everything. And we won the championship again from there. And then in 1980, we designed and built the Dylan, Mark 2 chassis, Mark 2, my number was number 2. And Ray and I designed and built that car together. And we actually owned short track race. And everybody who was anybody in the sport, including Dick Trickle and Rusty Wallace and, you know, you name anybody. They all had to buy one of those cars because it was so ahead of its time.

And it was NASCAR was beginning to change over from the big, huge car to the notchback little car for 1980. and it was an opportunity I saw to come in and clean their clock. I built a short track car with no tack in it, two gauges, little old coolers and stuff, aluminum drive shaft, aluminum tailpipes, you know, 600 pounds of lead, and I went to go clean their clock. And pretty much did for a guy who'd never been in the pits of a NASCAR race. my ASA pit crew and all. We went and set on two poles with, you know, there again, we had no money sponsor,

but we did everything off of the purse. And my, heck, my shop overhead was 300 bucks a week. So, you know, we could make a living. We could make it off of our purse money. We did five races, set on two poles, led two races, run third at Martinsville with Chevrolet, single piston, breaks, and I failed to see that it was going to be a lot harder than it looked. I mean, I thought I'd win a race in the next five races.

Wouldn't you have thought so? Yeah. I mean, it looked like we're fixing a win. And so the phone rings on the pole barn, on the pole on the pole barn, the phone rings. I'm out there working on getting ready to go to the snowball derby. Mark, this is Waddell Wilson. I'd like to know if you'd be interested in driving the 28 car. No, Wadale, I think I'd rather do my own deal.

I actually thought I was, I thought I had them. You know, I was so uneducated and so dumb and so naive that I thought I could do it on my own. And, of course, the car went straight to the Daytona 500 and set on the pole. However, there's another side of that story. Benny Parsons got the ride. Benny ran, I think about seven races, got fired after Talladega. So do you and I honestly think that 22-year-old Mark Martin could have kept that right? Could have out drove Benny Parsons?

I'm not sure. But history, if I could have, if I could have, history would have been a lot different. But the reason I didn't even consider it is I had three full-time employees. I had Banjo Grimm, David Levin'aw, and another employee. I had free cars from Ray Dillon, had always taken care of me. I was getting 100% free engines from prototype. I'm talking about Arka race, Bush races, NASCAR races, everything. We'd go to Wheeling, Illinois, pick up a motor every week, drop the other one off.

What was that supposed to do? see you guys. I'm off to the big time. I just was too loyal for that. Yeah. And as you go through that, and I mean, you look back on it, and it's so easy to look back and people ask me all the time, they're like, I can't, why did you, why'd you stay at RCR so long? And you just, when you're in the position that you were in and the position that I was in, you raced for a living and everything that you did was how you got to the next step. And those people that you had were, you were loyal to. I think that loyalty is definitely something that can be a detriment to what you do when you look back on it. But at the time, it's still the right thing to do because of who you are and, you know,

in the end, your reputation is all that you have, right? And so you go from, you go from that scenario to where you wound up at Roush. And, you know, you go through and win just a ton of races. Talk about your relationship, you know, in that time that you had with Jack Roush and then you have Jeff Burton come on and, you know, the camaraderie that the two of you had and it seemed like with Jack for a long time, man, you guys won a lot of races. And it just seemed to work through the years for you guys as personalities and people to kind of go through the boom of the sport but also be successful. So I go into great detail about all this in our new book.

Hopefully it'll be out in the next nine months or so. Awesome. We just complete it. But I go into great detail, but I'll give you a brief overview of that because those are two very important points. My relationship with Jack Roush, and I'm able to expand on it more in the book and my relationship with Jeff Burton. And I'll start with Jack. Jack, I was not Jack's first choice. Bobby Allison, Jeff Bodine turned him down.

I think Bobby Allison turned him down, but said, you know who you need to get, Mark Martin. And dude, I will never, ever forget that. So he hired me and started building a team from scratch. And he was an absentee owner. So he would come to the shop one day a week. And so he had trust issues with me. He was very afraid I'd get too big for my britches. He didn't trust the guys.

He didn't totally trust Steve Mill or Robin Pemberton. We had an all-star team there that really we knew NASCAR racing. And Jack didn't. But he didn't trust us enough. to give us full rain. And Jack was a, he was a very cold personality and very hard to get comfortable with.

And it took a long, long time. Jack is extremely loyal. He's loyal to a fault. He was loyal to people that, you know, didn't fully deserve that kind of loyalty to. And that's how loyal Jack Rosh was. But it took us a long time to build any confidence for Jack. I'm talking about years.

We finally, we started in 1988 and 1993. We finally turned the corner when I got pissed enough to tell him that I wanted to leave. And it was why. And I says, well, I can't get the cars built like I want them. And he said, why not? And I said because they say that you can't close the hood on the car. You know, you can't put a carburetor owner if you lower the nose that far. And I'm like, build the freaking car and put the motor in.

And they didn't even ask Jack because they knew how Jack was and didn't he ask him. Well, when I told him that, he said, well, that's bullshit. You build the car and then we put the engine in it. And I was like, dude, this guy's a racer. And he realized I was a racer because, you know, I'd finally had enough. I wanted to leave. And so we really started to build a relationship, you know, in 1993. We built that car with the low nose on it, had to take the carburetor spaceer almost completely off.

And then he had to build a distributor because the four distributors were in the front. He had to build a distributor that was shorter to short. shorted it so the hood would close. But the thing still fit the templates and was still legal. But by the way, we went four races in a row. Yeah. So we, you know, we built a lot going forward from there. And then as Jack got older and more used to it, he became a lot warmer.

And then by the time he had his plane accident, first plane accident, I think that that really changed him. and he became a lot a different person. I love Jack Roush with all my heart and owe my entire career to him. I stayed with him, just like you,

I stayed with him 19 years because he gave me a chance when nobody else would. Right. And NASCAR. And also, because he was smart enough, they never really paid me

very good until the last four or five years. But he would give me a contract. First one, I didn't care if they paid me or not. just wanted to drive. And it would be a five-year contract. And after two years, they'd say,

hey, we're going to tear your contract up and give you a new one for more money. What kind of fool would? Who wouldn't take that? So I was always buried five years. I never had a chance to ever have any leverage. And so they were really smart, but they always got a raise

every couple years or three years. and so we were all and it would always come after we'd win a few races so we'd all be feeling good um i had the opportunity unlikely but it's crazy but the 28 car you know in 1982 that i passed on i had the same opportunity after davy's accident and you know i would have liked to have gone and drove there but i had a contract and right like you know i when i said signed that, I said, I will drive your car. And what am I going to do, say, I changed my mind. You know, they had Valvene on board. I mean, it was, it was, I just, me, a lot of drivers did that. But for me, I couldn't do it. And crazy enough again, you know, after Ernie's accident,

the 28 car came up again. But I was, I always had a contract and I was always, you know, honored that contract. And I don't regret staying with Jack Rausch. You know, we won a lot of races. And he gave me the opportunity to sort of control my own destiny. Not in so much. After 93, when we had the body thing, he found, and I proved it with my Bush car, because the Bush car, I dictated everything on the bodies, who did the bodies, who did the chassis, the setups that went in them and everything. And so I continued to prove that I knew about cars. And so going forward from 93, I had, you know,

I had to say in everything that happened on the race car with the bodies or whatever. And so that, and if you notice, Jack Roush gave Matt Pence's the same kind of tools. to realize his dream. All the drivers that he hired, he never hired one single established driver except for Jamie McMurray. And I begged him, begged him and begged him to please hire Jamie

because Jamie was supposed to go in the sixth car. And I wanted him to replace me in the six car. Unfortunately, Kurt got bumped. And so Jamie went in, you know, went into Kurt's car and I stayed in the sixth car for another year. just to help them out. But that kind of brings us up to Jeff Burton. He's all the other teammates I'd had wanted to know what the six car had

and wanted what the six car had. And they never brought anything to us. You know, we always were giving to them. And I felt like it was hurting our program. Well, when Jeff did his deal, Jack decided to do something completely different and let Jeff and Buddy Parr do the whole deal. And Jeff did it all on his own. I mean, he determined who he wanted to work on the cars,

who he wanted to hang the bodies, how they were going to set the cars up and everything. He come out of the gate and out ran me, or ran just as good, the first year. And he never asked for anything. He just brought me, hidbits. hey, you ought to try this, or hey, I did this and it helped me. And so we became fast friends because we could collaborate as teammates should and make our cars

and our teams run better. Jeff was the best teammate you could have ever had. Yeah, I would tell you the exact same thing. That was my experience with Jeff Burton as well. And I look at the relationship that you guys had and the way that that all worked at Roush, as, I mean, it's very, it's very similar to the way that Penske operates and the way that they work together. I think the drivers got a long, a long way better than what their drivers do. But, you know, I think that when you look back, the other interesting piece of time for me was how, who convinced

who to put that engine program together? Because you guys had with Yates, because you guys had the cars figured out. You had the downforce. And when you look back at time and you see those engines go into those cars, holy cow. So how did that all transpire? Because that was a pretty big move for the engine department. Well, Jack was, you know, he was huge with Ford. I mean, he bleeds Ford Blue. and that was one of the reasons the 1990 championship deal, you know, came down. It was a pretty well-known factor that Robert was making 60 more horsepower, 55 to 60 more horsepower than us. But the only way that we saw how we could get one of those motors for the last race in Atlanta, which I had to outrun, I needed to win the race.

I had to outrun Hart, which was at his peak at Atlanta at the time. You know, we wanted one of those motors. So I climbed into one of Davies' cars and I went out and ran two-tenths quicker than I did in my car. Now, my car, if we would have taken that engine, probably would have been better. But it's just a lot more face-saving if we just borrowed that car. So it was proved. It made 700 horsepower. Jack was making, you know, 6.45 at the time, I think.

You know, and so we beat up on Jack. We actually, maybe a year later, we tested a Peter Gile motor, pro motor. Same thing. It was worth about two tents at Charlotte. But he said we didn't run the test right. Then they started doing chassis dinoes. And I ran second to Dale Jarrett. up at Michigan.

He tracked me down at the end, passed me, and went on and won to race, a race that I had dominated, and they chasied dinos, and they made 60 more horsepower to the ground than ours. Of course, Jack said, oh, the punch was slipping, you know. And so there were multiple times when we showed that kind of engine deficit, power-wise. And so, you know, Jack and Robert did not get along because they were fighting for the same Ford support. But some reason or another, Doug, Jack liked Doug Yates and really, I mean, liked him like loved him. And so that started to break the ice because Doug and Jack could collaborate on some things. and in the end, you know, you could see the handwriting on the wall that if they would combine,

you know, Jack was doing 10,000 RPMs when, because he couldn't make more bottom end. He just couldn't. And he would run these big valves and the valves would break, would blow up all the time. So Jack went the high RPM route. So, you know, I think, you know, I think we ran Phoenix at 10,200 RPMs when everybody else was around 97, 96, 9700. So Jack had a lot to bring to the table to Robert. And Robert had a lot to bring to the table for Jack. So it only made sense for them to go together.

And of course, when they did, you know, it was, you know, it was just incredible. They were able to build a powerhouse and other, you know, Chevrolet guys kind of had to follow suit as well. So, you know, it was just one of those things. but it took a long time to get there. And if anything I'm saying here, if anybody thinks that I'm saying something bad about Jack Roush, they're wrong. I love Jack Roush with all my heart.

I stood side by side with him and fought for everything that we ever got. And I'm so proud to be his friend. But, you know, truth or reality, just like me, I made mistakes. We had horrible gas mileage. And all the time. And I lost tons of races, and I always blamed that on Jack and the carburetor. And maybe that was part of it. But I never tried to learn how to save gas in those years.

And I look back on it and I say, well, I was just a hard-headed, you know, I was just as hard-headed as Jack Rouch was, you know, in my own way. And I cost us, I hate it that I didn't try to do better. Alan Gufferson taught me to say how to save fuel, and we once started winning races on fuel mileage. But Jack won me a race on fuel mileage, too, up at Dover. You know, in the later years, he got really good at fuel mileage and did that too. So I'm just giving examples of, hey, Jack and I fought hard for everything that we got,

and he's my blood brother. Yeah, and, you know, I think that that time that you guys had to get, was a pretty special time in the sport. And I know we can, we'll save the, we'll save the rest of the career for a, for a different episode because there's so much to, so much to talk about. And we're obviously with your book coming out, you know, we definitely need to read that. And I'll have a million more questions then. But when you look at your place in, in the sport right now, I feel like you've become so much more vocal about your feelings of the sports, you're at the events, you know, you, what, what made you put yourself in that position?

Because I feel like you have a really good voice and opinion and not scared to talk about it at all now. When did that, it's been that way for the last several years, but when did you feel comfortable with that in today's world? Well, I think social media, you know, has been a part of it because, you know, I have, you know, the opportunity to read comments, you know, it's not all my stuff. I mean, when somebody, when NASCAR makes a post or anyone else, I read what people say about it. So over a period of time, I've built what I believe is a consensus, you know, of understanding the fans. And the fans were the most important thing for you and I in our era because they're what paid, they were what paid the bills. And so I have a strong allegiance to our fans and they supported me really strong.

when, you know, I was a mediocre career driver, not, you know, not a Dale Earnhard or Jeff Gordon, for example, kind of career. And so I really appreciate that. I go to short track races a lot. I don't go to NASCAR races very much. I go to the short tracks, so dirt late bottles or asphalt late mile races. And everybody I hear talk to at the racetrack tell me. And they tell me this. same thing over and over and over again. And I see it. And so I just decided that I could be their voice, that, you know, their voice is not being heard. And so I can, I can be their voice. And so do I feel, sometimes I feel a little bit embarrassed like, like an idiot. But it, you know, I believe what I'm saying is true. You know, and that's pretty much about the points.

There's a lot of things that we could talk about, but the points championship is the one that, you know, that it's being looked at by NASCAR and all right now is how could we change the format or do we need to at all? And the majority of fans won a 36 race championship. And then below that, 30% of the fans want a 10 race chance. And so 20% of the fans either want the playoff system or a, you know, a jested version of the payoff system. And until somebody proves me wrong or until I get an answer for the fans for why their voice doesn't matter in this decision, I'm going to keep it up. Well, I love the fact that you're so honest.

And you don't really, you can tell that it's your opinion and you don't care about everybody else's opinion. You respect everybody else's opinion and want to hear and interact with the fans. And that's, for me, I like the, I'm just like you. I sat out there for two and a half hours in Colorado after the race on Saturday night and listened to every one of those fans and stood there and sat there and signed autographs until it was done because that's what we did. We signed autographs.

talk to the fans, we interact with the fans, we go do things that we're not supposed to do because we like racing. And we like being at the events. And you grew up in an era of racing that I'm a little bit jealous of just with the end of those 70s and 80s of being able to race with, you know, race with the people that you got to race with. I got a small sample of that being able to race with you and Jeff and, you know, some of the guys that came from that generation. So I always respect what the foundation that you guys laid, and I love that you're fighting for the foundation, and I agree with you.

You know, I think that that season matters. And I think that there's obviously a balance that can be there, but I think that the whole season should matter in the way that the championship is determined. How we get there, you know, or where we wind up, I don't know. But I've got one last question for you. What was your first car that you drove on the street? So my first car was a Chevy Blazer, 1974.

I was 15, and I didn't have a driver's license yet. And I used four of those stadium cushions to sit on. And I drove it to school, man. That was my daily driver. Oh, that's awesome. Did you wreck it, sell it? Keep it where to go? I, gosh, I sold it.

It was the next car or tour. three. I wrecked. I didn't wreck the first one, but I did wreck the second and third one. What was the, I told me it was last question, but I got to ask it anyway. What was the baddest race car that you ever drove? The thing that you wish you could have driven all the time. What, what car was it? Most power down force? Which one was it? It was 1981, you know, ASA or late model, really not the ASA because they had clipped our wings a little bit. So, you know, it was like the art go car where the rules, you could really wedge them up pretty nicely. That was at the peak of my fabricating career.

I lost those skills. When you don't use them, you lose them. And, you know, I've been hanging the bodies all the way up to that point. And so when I look at those, you know, there's a sense of pride. You know how it is. When your handprints are all over one of those things, you feel differently toward it. And so 1981 car. Yeah, those were the cars, I think we called them, referred to them as open comp cars out on the West Coast.

And those old wedge noses with the outlaw spoilers and things in the back. I'll never forget as a kid, Joe Rutman, coming out there and driving those cars at Mason Marin. So that's the, those are the things that I grew up watching. So, Mark, I appreciate the time. I appreciate what you've done for this sport and everything that you continue to do for. it and look forward to hopefully seeing you soon. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. It's good to be on your show with you and you're doing a great job.