Mark Martin’s words to live by were handed down from one generation to another. Julian Martin — his father, an Arkansas trucking magnate — lived by the adage of “never lift,” and though he never raced, his enthusiasm for cars and speed made him a local legend on the lawless back roads of home. It became a family tradition.
Julian Martin’s son is quick to recite the interpretation: “Never lift: ‘To keep one’s foot firmly planted on the accelerator pedal with complete disregard to the possible outcome can often end in catastrophic results, but with proper execution has been known to create legends,”” Mark Martin says. “That’s my dad.”
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So when Martin sat down to put pen to paper and tell his life story, with all the unlikely undulations of his Hall of Fame racing career, there was really only one potential title. That autobiography is now available for pre-order, with “Mark Martin: Never Lift” scheduled for publication in August from Octane Press.
RELATED: Pre-order now | NASCAR Hall of Fame members
Book cover for “Mark Martin: Never Lift,” the new autobiography from the NASCAR Hall of Famer
The hardcover book, co-written with veteran journalist Mark “Bones” Bourcier, weighs in at a hefty 544 pages, full of the detail that’s come from living through several decades of racing in different eras until his eventual retirement after the 2013 season. The 67-year-old veteran also points out that his story is now unfettered by obligations or restrictions — from team owners, sponsors or any sanctioning body. “Beholden to no one,” Martin says, promising an unflinching view of how it was.
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“The stories are fun to tell because the older we get, the more it sounds like the Wild West, racing in the ’70s,” Martin says. “You can’t believe the stories, because you couldn’t do it like that, or act like that now. This world was so different, and so there’s just a lot of interesting stuff. But it was not so much a reflection, it’s just being able to get it all out there.”
While many fans and observers connect more closely with Martin’s time in NASCAR’s Cup Series — especially his long-running association with fellow Hall of Famer Jack Roush — there’s a wealth of grassroots experience and success on the ASA circuit before his arrival in the iconic No. 6 Ford. Those tales are all there, from his three ASA championships before age 22, his self-propelled first Cup Series venture in the early 1980s, to a rocky bottoming out before rebuilding his career with a fourth ASA title and eventually fulfilling his big-league aspirations.
Once connected with Roush, Martin began shaping a NASCAR résumé that’s the envy of most mortals — 40 Cup wins, 56 poles and 882 starts.
“Of course I’m biased, but I think Dad has a really inspiring story,” says his son, Matt Martin. “He’s got a great comeback story, and even a lot of his diehard fans, they’re not even really aware of it. There’s basically a book’s length before you even get to the 6 car.”
Mark Martin offers some feedback to Bobby Allison, in town at Madison for an ARTGO event, driving for Ray Young, at left.
Many of those sections are sprinkled with the sharp detail and impressive recall that Martin has been known for. Show Martin a black-and-white photo of one of his former race cars on social media, and odds are that he’ll rattle off chassis info, setup numbers and the team owner without a hitch.
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That sort of precision was a hallmark of Martin’s career, and it’s served him well in this retelling of his story.
“That’s my life,” Mark Martin says. “That was my hands on my car before I raced NASCAR, those cars were my cars, and my hands were all over them, and so I like to talk about that. That was my world, and that’s how I beat the best of the best. I didn’t outdrive them; I made my car faster. It worked for me at the local dirt track when I started, all the way to Dale Earnhardt.”
Matt Martin interjects with a laugh: “You might have outdrove ’em a little bit, too.”
“Maybe,” his father concedes. “But you know, I didn’t have to worry about outdriving Dale Earnhardt if I made my car faster. Fast enough, I’d win. So there’s a lot of that in there. That was real important to me, and I was always a car guy. I don’t have great memory of normal things. You know, it’s not like everything. I’m not like a savant. I just can tell you what the setup was in 1977 at Anderson for the Redbud 400. I can tell you what tire compounds I had at the Snowball Derby in ’79. Those things, I can tell you.”
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Besides the goal of documenting one of the sport’s most storied careers, one of Martin’s objectives in writing this book is to share his experience with a younger generation of racers. He recalled how in the first phase of his NASCAR career, Martin crossed paths several times with stock-car pioneer Tim Flock, a 2014 Hall of Fame inductee. A lasting regret, Martin said, is not asking Flock about racing with a monkey in his car or what the barnstorming early days were like before the sport took flight.
“He was so much fun, and he was a character, but all I was worried about is, ‘how’s it gonna make my car go faster so I could win me a NASCAR race,”” Martin said. “So I think about that, and I think, ‘man, I hope some young people will take the time to learn about what came before them.’ I messed up. I didn’t. I mean, I know how it would have made him feel if I would have been interested in his career and what he did.”
That’s what Martin hopes to pass along to current-day and aspiring racers, the “never lift” ethos that’s carried him through his professional and personal life.
“I live my life wide open,” Martin says. “Everything I do, I go. … I don’t sit very still, so it is real fitting.”
A young Mark Martin looks under the hood in an Arkansas scene from 1974
