Relevance

I think I’ve lost my mind. For some reason, every time we show up to the racetrack, I think we’ve got a chance to run in the top 10 and compete for good finishes.

Crazy right?

You see in my head I think that despite the fact we run older SB2 Chevrolet motors – motors that are at least 15 HP off of the $20,000 to $30,000 per race lease engines – we can still qualify in the top 15. Despite the fact we have a 2-man team that works out of a shop that doesn’t even have a setup plate, I think we’ll be just as prepared when we unload as any of the big teams like ThorSport or GMS. Despite the fact that we can’t afford to buy new tires at $2,200 per set, and instead have to buy scuff tires off of other teams, I think we should be just as fast as them on restarts & long runs. I’m so stupid that I think despite the fact the truck series is having the most deep, competitive field it’s had in it’s entire 20 years of existence, that I’m a good enough driver to compete for wins with an underfunded, understaffed, & overworked team.

I’m an idiot.

But, luckily, this idiot had an epiphany this past weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. I finally got a grip on where Martins Motorsports is as a NASCAR race team. And the truth is, we’re average. That’s it. We’re average. Average might even be stretching it a bit. We’re below average. We should be finishing in 25th place every single week. It shouldn’t disappoint us or frustrate us. In fact, we should be excited about it. Heck, we qualified seven tenths off the pole at TMS and wound up 24th on the board. The field is really deep. The fact that we’re able to be average at this level with a team this small is pretty damn impressive.

The simple fact is, hard work and talent in this sport can only separate you when everything is equal. Things are rarely equal in racing. More than that, people like to embellish just how unequal things are for how it suits their own narrative.

I try my absolute guts out every time I’m in that racecar. I think I’m a pretty good driver. Kevin & Steve work their asses off each and every week. They’re both good, knowledgeable workers. But, it’s completely unrealistic to think that we’re going to consistently beat teams with good drivers and way more resources, experience, & people than we have at our disposal. Our misses are bigger. We don’t have the equipment to afford us room for any mistakes. When Cole Custer is really loose, he’s still running 15th and on the lead lap. When I’m really loose, we lose 2 laps in the first caution clock run and wind up completely out of the race (ie: Texas).

It really irritates when I hear people that cover this sport talking about guys being on small teams or running without a sponsor or being underdogs or blah-blah-blah. I think John Hunter Nemecheck is awesome. He’s friendly, has an unreal knowledge of the trucks we race (he’s basically an engineer), & he might be the best driver in the whole field. But to say he’s underfunded? Gimme a break! Undersponsored? No doubt. Underfunded? Psh. Ryan Truex can wheel it, but Hattori Racing is hardly an underfunded team. Jordan Anderson is an awesome dude with an awesome story, but he would grimace to tell you how much money his new team Bolen Motorsports spent this offseason. Parker Kligerman is killing it this year. But, they’re still showing up in a full rig, with 8-10 guys, buying the full compliment of tires, & leasing motors for every speedway race.

When you lease a motor & buy a full allotment of tires every week, that’s a minimum of $30,000 every race; it could be as high as $50,000 per race. Maybe I’ve been on the skid row side of the garage too long, but when you’re driving for a team with that kind of budget, you’re not an underdog. Top-10 finishes shouldn’t be surprising - they should be expected.

Which isn’t to say that Bolen Motosports, Hattori Racing, NEMCO, & RBR aren’t small teams. They are! They certainly don’t have the resources of KBM, Red Horse, GMS, ThorSport, or BKR. Those multi-truck teams are commanding per-race prices of upwards of $75,000 per race in sponsorship – for KBM I’ve heard as much as $150,000! I But, they are able to do what it takes to put a good, competitive truck on the track. Sure, they may cut a corner or two. Ricky Benton actually runs old style D3 Ford motors at some of the smaller tracks on the schedule to save money. Bolen Motorsports has run a short track truck at a few mile and a half races. Maybe they don’t have a 10+ person staff in the shop full time, but they aren’t underfunded. They’re just small.

We’re smaller. Smallest even. To quote the movie Moneyball, “There’s big teams, there’s small teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.” We’re literally relying on the prize money of [roughly] $15,000 a race to completely cover our expenses. Payroll included! I’m certainly not getting paid. Diamond Gusset has been an unbelievable partner to us, but they’re a small company who can’t afford to be a full-time, big team NASCAR sponsor. Fortunately for them, we don’t have a primary sponsor. We’ve been able to put them in a primary position, improve the look of our team, and give them some occasional TV coverage for the cost of an associate level sponsor. It’s been beneficial to both sides. I can’t say thank you enough to David Hall for his continued support.

I guess the thing is, if I’m not sending out press releases every week and complaining to the media about how rough the sport is or how we’re having to do it with less, then nobody should be. Besides, you never want to come across as if you’re begging for money. If anything, you always want to act like you’re doing it with less than the other guy! The guys I gave examples of - they all absolutely deserve every opportunity they have in front of them. I’m not bitter about their success. Far from it! Obviously my family had enough money to be able to buy some equipment and give me a shot in NASCAR. Believe me, we didn’t have that much. And what my family had, we spent too much of. My parents have risked their futures to put me in a racecar more times than I’d like to talk about. But, that’s still more than millions of hopeful drivers around the world will ever get. It’s just the business of racing. Teams with bigger budgets are going to run better than teams with smaller ones. We don’t have to continually exaggerate the truth to the fans of this sport.

I get so caught up in how other people look at me as a NASCAR driver. I doubt myself all the time. Do I deserve to be here? That’s the wrong question to ask in racing. Lots of guys deserve to be here. Unfortunately, they’re not. Most of them won’t ever be. The only thing we can do is judge the guys that are here based on the opportunities they’ve been given.

Tommy Joe Martins is a known quantity in this sport by now. I ran 4 races in 2009. My best finish was 21st. I ran 13 Xfinity races in 2009. I start and parked a lot. My best finish was 14th at Talladega but everyone knows anyone can get a good finish at those things. My average finish for the year was somewhere around 34th. This year I’ve raced 6 times and had an average finish of 25th place (the Martinsville race Austin Wayne had to sub for us because we crashed out of 8th in qualifying). To everyone that covers and watches this sport, Tommy Joe Martins is a slow driver. Yeah, our team is what it is - but it’s still my name above the door. My entire NASCAR career I’ve done nothing but finish in the back of the pack. I’m irrelevant. And it burns me to no end. Everything my family and I have been through just to get to this level and despite all our effort we don't have anything to show for it. Not even recognition. No one cares who finishes 25th. Nor should they. Will that be my racing legacy? Will all of that time, money, & sacrifice never be rewarded? I know I’m a good enough driver to compete for wins in this series, even if I’m the only person in the whole world that believes it. But, if that win, that top 5, that moment never comes simply because I was never in a truck good enough to do it – then was it worth it?

Kevin Eagle is a good Crew Chief. He’s got a reputation in the garage area as being one the hardest working, nicest guys you’d ever meet, but where has it gotten him? He’s been kicked around, fired, underpaid, worked countless hours for teams & drivers he knew had no shot at ever winning races or even competing for quality finishes. He actually said to my father and I that Martins Motorsports is the best team he’s ever had the privilege of working for (which oughta tell you a lot). He’s mostly worked in the Xfinity & Cup series, and he’s still learning more about the truck series, but he’s picking it up pretty quick. I know nobody is working harder than he is, and I can say that literally because he has to prepare the trucks & drive the hauler to every single race with only 1 other guy to help him.

It’s not a fair sport.

Our hands are tied. Until we’re able to get more funding, we are who we are. We’re a small team that can occasionally overachieve and run in the top-20.

That’s okay.

I don’t have to be happy running 25th; I wouldn’t be a racecar driver if I was. But, I’m blessed to even be a part of this wonderful sport, and I’m going to try a lot harder to appreciate the opportunity that I do have, instead of being irritated by an opportunity that someone else has. Maybe my time will come. Maybe it won’t. Either way I’ve learned more about myself as a driver and a competitor this year than I have in my entire racing career, and I’m going to enjoy the ride.

Close

We’re in a tough business.

I spoke with Buddy Sisco, the Crew Chief of the #2 truck for Brad Keselowski Racing this past weekend. I offered my sympathies for his team’s bad luck. It was the second week in a row they had been sent home with a DNQ [Did Not Qualify] because of a rainout - had qualifying taken place, they would’ve absolutely been fast enough to make the field in both races. He didn’t seem that upset. As the team loaded up the hauler behind him, he told my father and I, “We knew there was a chance. That’s the business we’re in. That’s big league stock car racing.”

The reality is the rainout helped our team tremendously. Because of our bad luck at Daytona & Kentucky, we were sitting in a very dangerous position in the point standings. With the 38-truck field at Charlotte, the best shot we had at making the race this weekend was to qualify in a guaranteed top-27 position. If we had to rely on points, it was gonna be iffy at best.

It rained off and on all day Thursday, but we managed to squeeze in one practice. We didn’t unload well. We dug the splitter into the track for the first 30 minutes of the session – the only session. We got to make a few runs at the end of the practice but we really didn’t get much time to IMPROVE the truck. The Diamond Gusset Chevy wasn’t fast, but our best lap came on 21 lap tires; we had no idea how good, or how far off, we actually were.

Then, it rained. We got to avoid the stress of qualifying & the potential disaster of missing a race. It saved a few others behind us in points, too. As my father and I breathed a sigh of relief, I realized just how close we were to not making a race. When we set our goals at the beginning of the year, the first one on the list was to qualify for all 23 races on the schedule because of the impact it would have on our team financially. As a small, independent team, we rely primarily on the prize money to fund our efforts each and every week. A missed race is a missed check. It’s a story we know all too well due to our lack of success in the Xfinity Series in 2014.

It kept raining all day Friday, and all Friday night. We wound up running our scheduled Friday night race in the middle of the day Saturday afternoon.

I thought we had a solid race. I’ve been very disappointed with myself at times this year. I think I did a crappy job at Atlanta. I think I sucked last week at Dover. This weekend I thought I did a pretty good job of running consistently throughout the course of the race. I felt as comfortable as I’ve ever felt in a NASCAR stock car, but we just weren’t fast enough to stay with some of the other lead lap cars.

Unlike at Dover where we were all over the place and I spent the majority of my time trying to keep the truck out of the wall and off everyone else, we got to race in Charlotte. Sure, we battled some handling problems, but we stayed on the lead lap for the majority of the race, and I loved being able to run side by side with some competitive teams and make some passes. We struggled the first few laps of a run to get going, but our truck would really come to us over the course of a long run. We were just giving up way too much track position fighting the truck the first twenty laps of a run.

It’s a great feeling to be deep in a race and running on the lead lap. Even when we did get lapped again late in the race I could see that we weren’t WAY off the pace of some of the top five cars on long runs- less than half a second for sure – which is encouraging. Besides obviously being down on horsepower, I think we’re also getting hurt on the aero side of things. Guys could drive into the corner so much more aggressively than I could & still hold their trucks on the bottom of the racetrack. I think that’s downforce related, but there could be several factors.

There were only three cautions during the race, which was surprisingly low. They helped us and hurt us. We pitted late during the first competition caution and got the chance to lead a lap and pick up an extra point, so that was pretty cool to be able to look up at the scoreboard and see a #44 on top of it. The one quickie caution that happened right in front of me (I’m glad I could get around the spinning Christopher Bell by diving down pit road) got us back on the lead lap as the lucky dog, which was also nice.

We needed another caution late in the race, but we made it to 20-to-go one minute before the caution clock was set to run out, so NASCAR turned it off. That cost us a chance at the wave around & to get back on the lead lap. Also, we thought about gambling on fuel strategy, but after Kevin ran the calculations it looked like we were gonna be about six laps short. The pit stop we made wound up costing us another lap, but lots of trucks were in and out of pit road the last ten laps. Team strategies were all over the place.

As we came to the checkered flag, I was in the middle of about a six truck group. I wasn’t racing any of them for position, so I sorta backed out and let them go at it. I figured it had to be for a top ten spot or something because they were really racing hard, bouncing off each other down the back stretch and through turns 3 & 4. A few of them wound up in the wall at the start finish line right in front of us and I had to dive low to get around it. Obviously I was surprised when I got out of the truck and looked up at the scoreboard to find out they were tearing each other up for 18th place.

Fans have got to love how intense the racing in this series is, but damn is it wild when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat! As crazy as things got around us, I’m glad we were able to bring the truck home in one piece and beat some of our direct competitors in the point standings. Overall, 25th place wasn’t a BAD finish for us.

I posted on instagram about how torn I was over our weekend. I don’t see it as a negative weekend at all! I can see how close our team is to being a competitive, top-20 NASCAR team, even in our infancy in the Camping World Truck Series. We’ve got great chemistry, solid trucks, tremendously loyal supporters like Rodney Riessen and wonderful marketing partners like Diamond Gusset Jeans - but, it’s not enough. As close as we are to success at this level, Charlotte also proved we’re equally as close to failure. CLOSE just doesn’t cut it at this level of motorsports.

I’ve got to be better. The team has to get better. Whatever it takes - financial support, a better engine program, aero & setup tweaks – we’ve gotta find a way to make it happen or we could be sitting on the other side of the fence when we get to Texas Motor Speedway.

That’s big league stock car racing.

I’m blessed to be a part of it, and I don't want to give it up any time soon. I’m looking forward to a few weeks off, and I know the guys are already hard at work on the prep for our next 3 week stretch of Texas, Iowa, & Gateway. We’ll be ready.

(0-4)

We went to Dover with some high hopes. After our small success at Martinsville, we thought the Monster Mile would be a good track for us. As it turns out, it wasn’t. There’s no one to blame as to why – it was a conglomeration of problems that spoiled our weekend, and I certainly had a part in that.

I was reminded during my flight home of something Russell Wilson spoke about during the Seahawks Super Bowl winning season a few years ago. They didn’t win every game that year. In fact, a couple times, despite the successes of their defense, their offense struggled. They went on to win 13 games that year, and in reflection Russell stated, “sometimes, just like in baseball, you have days where you go 0-4.”

Martins Motorsports went 0-4 this past weekend in Dover.

I had been to Dover before, which allowed us to mock up pretty quickly for a qualifying run early in the first practice session. That’s where our problems started. We bottomed the truck out HARD and it took us a little while to figure out what the problem was. Eventually after clearing it up, first practice was over. We were slow, the truck was a handful, and we only had one more practice to try to fix it. We didn’t. The truck never felt like it was IN the racetrack. It was tight in the middle of the corner, sliding the front end, but completely loose as I tried to apply the throttle.

As Kevin Eagle and I discussed it that night, we settled on the idea that it could be a shock problem, and we crossed our fingers that we could get a qualifying session in so we could just use it like an extra practice. Mother Nature didn’t grant us that opportunity. Qualifying was rained out and we wound up starting at the back of the grid due to our practice time.

The race didn’t get much better. It was one of the longest, toughest races I’ve ever run. We nearly wrecked the truck 5 or 6 separate times. Kevin tried every adjustment he could make, but nothing helped. We finished the race in 24th place, which felt like a small victory given how bad we had struggled all weekend. It certainly was a better finish than we deserved.

I’m disappointed in myself. I felt like I never got in a good rhythm all weekend. Sure, the handling of the truck affected that, but it’s my job as a driver to help to pinpoint the issues. We never were able to do that.

Midway through the race, I was getting extremely tired. At one point, I tried to move my hand off the wheel and I physically couldn’t get my hand to open; it had been clinched so tightly that it had cramped up, and it took me driving the truck with my knee and pulling my hand off of it to get some relief. The position of the steering wheel in the truck was off, but in our rush to work on the truck during practice, I had forgotten to mention it. By having the wheel too high, my arms got pretty tired during the middle part of the race. All of these things are physical issues that have made me realize I need to make conditioning & the details of my cockpit much bigger priorities.

We learned a lot as a team this weekend, and I learned a lot as a driver. Dover is a tough racetrack, and it kicked my ass. I’m looking forward to redeeming myself at another track I’ve raced at, Charlotte Motor Speedway, this Friday night.

A Lesson

Have you ever been so mad, so frustrated that you aren’t even angry? You’re just calm. That was my mindset after we retired from Friday’s race at Kansas Speedway.

I felt exhausted. My father felt the same way. I’ll give our Crew Chief Kevin Eagle credit, he just went right back to work. Even though a motor issue ended our day, he and our crew kept working tirelessly to find the issues with our Diamond Gusset Chevrolet. Their effort is especially commendable given the damage we sustained in practice had them busting their tails all day Thursday to prepare the truck for race day.

I guess that’s my takeaway from Kansas. Our team doesn't quit. They never get their heads down. Even in the face of tremendous, unwarranted adversity, they just keep digging. They've taught me something about my approach to not just racing, but my outlook on any struggle life presents. I’ve been so blessed to have the opportunity to work with them this year, and I know that success HAS to be on the horizon for our team.

The weekend started out okay. It was my first time ever at Kansas Speedway, and my takeaway is it’s FAST. Per usual, Kevin and our team unloaded a solid truck for us to work on during practice. We skipped first practice because the conditions were going to be so different than qualifying or race time. When we went out for second practice, we did a shakedown run & two mock qualifying runs, which went fine. We wound up 23rd in P2, which we felt solid about going into final practice.

That’s where things went bad. When we first started out with our race runs, we actually picked up two tenths! Our truck was flying, and handling great. When I went into turn 3 on about our 4th lap of practice, the right front tire went down, sending us into the wall. I tried to pedal it as best as I could, eventually surrendering to the fact we were going to make contact. Luckily I was able to square the wall up, resulting in SOME damage to our Diamond Gusset Chevy, but Kevin and the guys stayed upbeat and were able to get the truck mostly repaired before the garage closed.

I can’t say enough about their effort on that fact. We don't have a backup truck. For us, if we didn’t get the truck fixed enough to make it through tech inspection, we would’ve been forced to retire from the event. Not only did they get it fixed enough to make it through tech, we had our second best qualifying effort of the year, 19th! I actually think I gave up a little during our qualifying run, but the guys told me to take it easy and feel it out after the damage in practice. Needless to say, we were excited for the race.

When the green flag dropped, it was obvious it was going to be an exciting race. Guys were all over the place. We got put 4 wide twice. We got put 3 wide 2 or 3 separate times. The aggression level in our series is at an all time high. If someone has a problem in front of you and you cut them a break, immediately the guys behind you are making it 3 wide. It’s crazy. That’s why you’re seeing so many accidents this year. Smart racing has gone completely out the window.

I got a bad initial start of the race, but was able to get back up around the top 20 before I felt us having another tire issue. I brought the truck down pit lane, and sure enough, it was another flat right front tire. The stop ended up costing us 3 laps, but we got back out on track right behind the leaders. Toby, our spotter, was encouraging me to stay focused and try to get one of our laps back; we were actually 2 tenths of a second faster than the leader when we got back out on track.

Unfortunately, 4 laps into that run, our motor started to sputter. Immediately I shut the motor down, hoping to keep from damaging it any further. When I brought the truck to pit lane, eventually we rolled it behind the wall and retired from the race.

The initial impressions are that we didn’t blow it up; it’s just a small leak we’ll be able to fix. It was and still is a very scary time for our small team since we only own two motors. Damaging one this early in the season could basically cost us the opportunity to race the rest of the year. We’re still waiting to hear from Mark Smith at Pro Motors to give us the final verdict.

As frustrated as I was when I left the race track, I’m more encouraged this Monday than I have been all year. We have speed. We are good. That’s more than a lot of the teams we’ve been racing against can say. Yeah, they might be finishing races ahead of us, and yeah we’ve had some awful luck this year, but it’s more and more obvious that this team and I can compete at this level, and our expectations are continuing to rise as the season goes along.

I’m ready to get to Dover.