But Martin sounded like a driver who has no plans to race after 2013 when he talked to reporters Friday night at Phoenix International Raceway.
Martin has an undefined role at Stewart-Haas Racing for next season with the only thing confirmed is his testing for the injured Tony Stewart until Stewart can get into the car for the season-opening Daytona 500.
“It’s time for me to open a new chapter and do some other things,” the 54-year-old Martin said. “It’s exciting because I get to be involved in racing and I love it so much.
“But I don’t think I’m going to miss being a race-car driver because I got to do that and was real good at it.”
He wouldn’t use the word “retirement” because he’ll be with the team, even if just in the background helping test or shake down cars.
“My life is going to change,” Martin said. “I’m going to open a new chapter. … I’m not having to quit before I’m ready.
“I squeezed every ounce of the good stuff out of my driving career. I’m really excited about moving on and being involved in racing. I’ll still compete as a competitor in other ways.”
So will his last race be next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway?
“I don’t want to discuss that right now,” Martin said. “I really enjoyed this year not dealing with all of that, and I don’t think that that’s of any major consequence. … I have shot every inquiry down that I’ve had for any of the top three divisions for 2014. I’ve shot them down because I haven’t been interested in doing that.”
But it is a major consequence. Martin has 40 career wins in 880 starts dating back to a 1981 race at North Wilkesboro. He has never won the Daytona 500 nor a Cup title but has done just about everything else. He has five second-place finishes in the points, including in 2009, which marked his return to full-time racing after two years on a part-time schedule.
“I won’t be in the Daytona 500 (next year),” Martin said. “I ran third in the Daytona 500 in 2013. That felt good and I knew that that was my last Daytona 500.”
Martin said he knows he is working harder than the younger drivers but that “father time” has taken a little bit from his skills. He has competed in 26 of the 33 races this season, having added races to his original schedule by being the replacement for Stewart. Martin is confident he will remain with the organization even when Stewart comes back in February.
“We haven’t done (anything) solid with the level of commitments or duties that I will have,” Martin said. “I told them that I want to get this year behind me. I’m kind of tired. I might not make the best decisions right now.
“I want to stay focused on these races. We’re improving and that feels good. … I’ll still have an opportunity to satisfy my competitive fire and still be able to be involved in the sport at whatever level I want to be. And we’ll let that kind of materialize as we move forward past Homestead.”
Martin said his struggles as Stewart’s replacement—he has just one top-10 in 10 starts—had no bearing on the decision not to make any 2014 racing plans.
“I was trying to go out with some dignity,” Martin said. “The last two months has not been pretty. … Obviously it was my hope to slip into this racecar and get people’s attention.
“And I did. I got their attention. They said, ‘Boy, he ain’t running worth a flip.’ … All I really care about right now is for that thing to haul the mail in the sprint when Tony slips in.”
EXPOSING JOHNSON'S WEAKNESS
Brad Keselowski isn’t exactly sure what Jimmie Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus meant when he said recently that Matt Kenseth was a more formidable Chase foe than Keselowski was last year.
But he knows one thing: He got in Johnson’s head last year and accomplished his ultimate goal of winning the Sprint Cup championship. And he says that Kenseth should go for Johnson’s weakness by being aggressive and racing him hard.
Johnson holds a seven-point lead on Kenseth with two races remaining in the Chase for the Sprint Cup—the same position he was in last year before Keselowski took over the points lead when Johnson suffered a flat tire at Phoenix. Keselowski went on to win the 2012 title when Johnson has more mechanical problems in the season finale.
Knaus was asked after Johnson’s win Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway to compare his confidence this year to 2012, and Knaus said that Kenseth was a more formidable foe than Keselowski. The five-time championship crew chief said that the 41-year-old Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion, was more of a threat than Keselowski, who last year was 28 years old and in just his third year of Cup competition.
“Matt, just from his personality standpoint, is a little more controlled (than Keselowski),” Knaus said.
“He's a little more mature. He's been in the sport for a long time. I think he's just a little more even keel, so that makes him a little more challenging to get off kilter, off rocker.”
Keselowski didn’t exactly embrace the comment.
“It’s just one of those situations where it’s hard to really define what he was trying to say,” Keselowski said. “I said I would give him the benefit of the doubt but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. … Maybe the emphasis should be put on respecting what Matt has done, not necessarily on disrespecting where I’m at.”
Keselowski said it was his team that got Johnson off kilter.
“That team’s success comes from almost the ‘gosh, golly gee’ approach of not racing hard and just beating you on pure speed, which has been their traditional advantage,” Keselowski said of Johnson’s No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team. “For them, I wouldn’t want to have to race somebody that is going to race me hard because that’s not their wheelhouse.
“That was one of our strengths last year. If I were going to give Matt a piece of advice, I’d say use the s--- out of him every time you get. Run him hard because that’s his weakness.”
ADDINGTON COULD MOVE
With most of the major rides settled for 2014, the next part of Silly Season to unravel will be crew chiefs.
At the top of the list is what will happen at Stewart-Haas Racing, which still needs a crew chief for new driver Kurt Busch and possibly could make a change for three-time Cup champion Tony Stewart.
Stewart crew chief Steve Addington said Friday that he has “no clue” about what he would be doing in 2014 or whether he would be back as Stewart’s crew chief. SHR competition director Greg Zipadelli declined comment on who would be the crew chiefs for SHR next year, saying he hoped to finalize things in the next week as SHR expands from three to four teams.
Stewart was 11th in points with one win when he broke his leg in a sprint-car race in August. Addington is in his second year as crew chief for Stewart, and the team has struggled all season with Stewart and his primary fill-in Mark Martin.
Chad Johnston, a crew chief at Michael Waltrip Racing who was out of a job when NAPA pulled its from Martin Truex Jr.’s team, said Friday that he did not have anything finalized for next year. A move to SHR is a possibility.
SHR already has hired Rodney Childers from MWR to be the crew chief for incoming driver Kevin Harvick, who is replacing Ryan Newman. That also could leave Newman crew chief Matt Borland looking for a spot with another team. Moving with Newman is not an option as Luke Lambert will remain with the Richard Childress Racing No. 31 car that Newman will take over from Jeff Burton after this season.
Kasey Kahne engineer Keith Rodden declined last week to confirm rumors that he was headed to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing to be the crew chief for Jamie McMurray next year. EGR spokesman John Olguin said the team is still working on its 2014 plans. Chris Heroy is expected to return to the No. 42 team as crew chief for Kyle Larson, who is replacing Juan Pablo Montoya.
Also looking for a crew chief is Aric Almirola, whose crew chief Todd Parrott was released last month after being suspended for a violation of the NASCAR substance-abuse policy.
HARVICK DOWNPLAYS DISPUTE
Kevin Harvick doesn’t just come back to Phoenix International Raceway as the defending winner of the November race.
He comes back with the knowledge that he won that race amid a bit of drama and controversy. It was at Phoenix last year when news broke that Harvick would be leaving Richard Childress Racing for Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014.
It was on the 1-mile track where Harvick proved that he and his RCR team could perform despite the off-track drama. That experience could come in handy this weekend considering the drama of a couple of weeks ago when Harvick ripped the Dillon brothers, the grandsons of team owner Richard Childress and the future of RCR.
Childress was livid with Harvick, who called Austin and Ty Dillon "punk-ass kids" and said they had everything given to them. But the two apparently have been able to work together as Harvick puts an end to a Cup career at RCR that began when he replaced Dale Earnhardt after the seven-time Cup champion’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500.
“Obviously we had the incident at Martinsville,” Harvick said prior to practice Friday at PIR. “But it’s definitely not the hardest situation that we’ve been through as owner and driver or friends, whatever you want to call it. … It’s kind of like being part of your family.
“You have some spats and you have some things but it seems like each instance makes you closer in some kind of way.”
BURTON: I’ll BE AROUND
Jeff Burton will make his 1,000th career NASCAR national series start Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway.
His 1,001st start will be the season finale next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
But how many more there will be beyond that remains to be determined. Burton, who will leave Richard Childress Racing after this season, has been saying for a month that he knows what he’ll be doing in 2014. Despite those assurances, he has yet to announce anything.
“I feel that I know what I am going to be doing, it’s just you all don’t,” Burton said Friday at Phoenix. “Some things have taken a little longer than I thought they would take and some of that is because of me. Some of that is because I slowed some stuff down and wanted to really think about it. Some of it is because some situations have popped up that weren’t there a little bit ago.
“I feel very confident. I know exactly what I’m going to be doing part of next year and there is another part of it that I’m still working on, but really close on. I’m just not the kind of person that is going to talk about it until we need to be talking about it.”
Burton said some of those plans include racing, and he has said that it would be Cup racing. He has been mentioned as a possibility for the part-time No. 55 team at Michael Waltrip Racing next year.
Burton, who is known for his ability to analyze the sport and break things down for the casual fan to understand, is interested in doing television work.
“I decided to step back a little bit and take myself out of the mental habit of being at the racetrack every single weekend and look at things from a broader view,” Burton said. “(I’ve been) in kind of ‘hey what else is out there’ in the racing world, so to speak. The last several months have been really interesting. I have been offered some things that were just crazy that I can’t talk about today, but there were some really interesting things that have come my way.
“I will be involved in the sport. There is a place for me.”
KEITH NAMED GRAND MARSHAL
Country music superstar Toby Keith will serve as the grand marshal for the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway Nov. 17.
The season finale for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series will determine the 2013 champion to cap Ford Championship Weekend. Jimmie Johnson leads Matt Kenseth by seven points with two races remaining. The race is scheduled for 3 p.m. on ESPN.
Keith, a singer-songwriter, actor and music producer known for his patriotism, will deliver the command to fire engines.
“Toby Keith is an American icon and, like Homestead-Miami Speedway, he has a great partnership with Ford,” Homestead-Miami Speedway President Matthew Becherer said. “He is the perfect individual to officially start the Ford EcoBoost 400.”
Keith, an Oklahoma native, has had 32 No. 1 singles. He released his 17th studio album, “Drinks After Work,” on Oct. 29.
CRAFTON LOCKS UP TITLE
Matt Crafton took all the drama out of the Truck Series championship Friday night with a solid finish at Phoenix International Raceway.
Erik Jones became the youngest winner in series history, racing to his first win on NASCAR's national level, at 17 years and 4 months. He broke the mark set in September by Chase Elliott, who was five months older when he won in September in Bowmanville, Ontario.
The pressure is finally off Crafton, who finished fifth. With a lead of 46 points over Ty Dillon, Crafton needs only to start next Friday night in the finale at Homestead to win the championship.
Contributors: Bob Pockrass, Jeff Owens, The Associated Press
