Mark Martin’s Mission Impossible

Mark Martin’s Mission Impossible began victoriously Sunday in the nerve-biting opener of The Chase, taking the Sylvania 300 by winning three restarts over the final 18 laps at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. The 50-year-old wunderkind looked to have no shot at NASCAR’s postseason when he first began the 2009 season with a passel of DNFs and poor finishes. Of course, Martin rebounded to head into the Chase as the standings leader, based on regular-season victories, and now takes a 35-point lead over Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin into Round 2 at Dover.

Backmarkers did their best to sabotage the ending of the 300-lap race, most notably the tit-for-tat spat between Marcos Ambrose and A.J. Allmendinger—two Chaseless dudes— and their childish game of tag with the race on the line. With just six laps remaining, Ambrose’s payback to Allmendinger from a love tap by the 44 car on the previous lap spun out Allmendinger, and the yellow flag flew. But as he had done on the previous restart on Lap 287, Martin chose the outside lane with just three laps to go. This time, he was matched up mano a mano with pole-sitter Juan Pablo Montoya, who restarted on the inside of the two lines. Some wondered if Montoya would slide up the track into Turn One and push Martin out of the picture, but the Colombian driver put his best racing foot forward and refused to dust the near-senior citizen, who slightly edged him into the turn. Allmendinger couldn’t seem to get out of anybody’s way in the closing laps. As the white flag flew for Martin, Allmendinger spun out on the front straight, but race officials let Martin and Montoya and the others race. The yellow was eventually thrown somewhere on the final lap, but all headed for the finish line without abatement, with the pitiful Allmendinger still spinning his wheels in an attempt to get out of the way of the onrushing tsunami of racecars bearing down on him.

For those counting such things, of the seven cautions caused by car interaction on the track, six were caused by non-Chasers. In fact the only caution created by a car in the Chase was Kasey Kahne’s retirement with a blown engine early in the race. Three yellows flew from debris on the track.