Biggest test yet to come for happiest man in NASCAR

LOUDON, N.H. -- Had he stuck to his original plan, Mark Martin would be four years into semi-retirement by now. He would probably be flying his airplane around the world, managing his car dealerships and museum in Arkansas, and finagling an occasional start in the Nationwide or Camping World Truck circuits.

Martin would still be around, of course, but he'd be on the periphery -- close enough to NASCAR to whet his occasional competitive appetite, but far enough away to enjoy the kind of life his successes have afforded him.

Contract extension

Mark Martin isn't ready to hang up the helmet and step out of the car any time soon.

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And he wouldn't be having near as much fun as he is today.

Nearly five years after he announced his intentions to step away from full-time racing on NASCAR's premier circuit, Martin is still around, and showing no signs of going anywhere. He's 50 years old and in perhaps the best ride of his career, a Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 car that leads the Sprint Cup standings entering Sunday's Chase opener at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

In May, he announced he would return in 2010. On Friday, he announced he would continue into 2011. At this pace, he'll be committed through 2016 by the end of the year.

And who could blame him? Thanks to a lifetime of devotion to strength training and nutrition, he's in tremendous physical shape, a 125-pound featherweight more than capable of whipping up on kids half his age. He made his pseudo-retirement announcement in 2004 because he didn't want to one day cross that invisible line that separates the competitive from those who stayed in the car too long.

There are no such concerns now. Martin is the happiest man in NASCAR, walking around the garage area with his pockets stuffed full of house money, living the kind of dream season that never should have been reality. There's no pressure. How can there be pressure when you weren't even supposed to be here in the first place?

So of course he's going to keep going. He once seemed so wary of decline that the very prospect of it led him to step out of his iconic No. 6 car. Now Martin sounds as if decline is an impossibility.

"I don't see me falling off a cliff anytime soon," Martin said during the formal announcement of his 2011 extension, 20 races of which will be funded by the Web site GoDaddy.com.

"I hope that I'll be able to do the job, and I'm having a blast. I understand that it works better for sponsor commitments and those kinds of things. And so I'm pretty comfortable. There's no place I'd rather be today than at the race track. I didn't always feel that way. And so I did something about it. And now I feel that way. So now I'm doing something about that."

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