INSIDE MOTOR SPORTS
'I Miss Him Bad'
In his best season, Mark Martin is haunted by the mystery of his
dad's death
by Ed Hinton and Loren Mooney
Posted: Wed September 23, 1998
Things couldn't be better for Mark Martin on the racetrack. On
Sunday he dominated the MBNA 400 at Dover, Del., leading 380 of
the 400 laps to give him a career-best six wins this season. Off
the track, however, he continues to grieve over the death of his
father, Julian, who was 62, in an Aug. 8 plane crash. In fact,
the unknown circumstances of the accident, which also took the
lives of Julian's wife, Shelley, 38, and their 11-year-old
daughter, Sarah, still keep Mark awake.
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Martin's win at Dover on Sunday gave him half a dozen
victories in 1998.
(Nigel Kinrade)
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Julian was flying his twin-engine Piper Cheyenne home to Searcy,
Ark., after visiting relatives in Santa Rosa, Calif., when the
plane crashed near Great Basin National Park in Nevada. The
National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an
investigation, the results of which may not be available for
months.
"I'm a pilot," says Martin, who owns a 1995 Cessna Citation jet
and flies it back and forth from the hangar adjacent to his house
in Daytona to Winston Cup races. "So it's not just O.K. for me to
say, 'Well, something happened to their airplane, and they
crashed.' My father was a tremendous pilot. He could do anything
and was afraid of nothing. I want to know what killed my hero."
Last week Martin received a copy of the cockpit voice tape and
had listened to the final minutes 50 times by Saturday. "I've
heard his last words," Martin says. "He called and said he'd lost
cabin pressure [at about 27,000 feet] and needed immediate
descent. The air-traffic controllers didn't hear him and called
back, asking, 'What did you say?' and he said, 'I need immediate
descent.'"
There has been speculation that Julian and the others lost
consciousness before descending to a safe altitude. Martin
doesn't believe this theory. "His voice sounds urgent," he says,
"but at no point does he seem as if he's suffering from effects
of lack of oxygen."
Mark was only five when Julian took him out on backcountry gravel
roads in their hometown of Batesville, Ark., and taught him to
drive. The son sat in the father's lap behind the wheel while
Julian floored the accelerator, forcing a sometimes sobbing Mark
to steer the car to avoid crashing. Julian drank to excess, often
drove recklessly and had a rocky relationship with Mark's mother,
Jackie, whom he divorced, remarried and divorced again. In recent
years Julian had quit drinking and was devoted to his second
family.
"He didn't always do the right things, but I don't hold any
strikes against him," says Mark. "When he did good things, he was
good." Julian had an intensity and a work ethic that he passed on
to his son. While managing his own thriving trucking business,
Julian moonlighted as his son's car owner and chief mechanic
during Mark's early racing days.
While Martin waits for the investigation to conclude, he relishes
the distraction that racing provides. "I'm doing the best I can,
but I miss him bad," he says. "There won't be closure on this
until I know what happened."
Issue date: September 28, 1998
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