NASCAR’s modern cars have become a testament to safety in motorsports. Drivers have walked away from the most terrifying wrecks. Yet, now and then, there comes a crash that stays with the spectators.

No matter how safe a car is, these crashes manage to point out the exact flaw that has been overlooked, and that’s what makes them fatal. One such former driver was put in a situation like this. At an age where most would choose retirement, he chose to keep racing, but that decision could’ve been fatal on that day in Michigan, 2012.

The story of a NASCAR driver’s escape from death

“It may not have been survivable,” Mark Martin, 66, puts it straight away. Mark Martin’s 2012 Michigan crash is still one of the scariest wrecks ever witnessed in the sport.

Having debuted in the NASCAR Cup Series in 1981, Martin had faced his fair share of crashes. In fact, he drove in an era when the smallest of crashes could turn fatal. But that crash in 2012 was something else.

After a long time, Martin saw himself in a race-winning position. Having started it in pole position, there seemed to be nothing in his way to another NASCAR victory. However, he found himself behind Juan Pablo Montoya, who was trying to battle another car, both behind backmarkers. Their battle took a wild turn, as Martin’s Toyota also got involved, and he found himself running off the track and into the pit wall.

There, he hit the wall sideways, T-boning the car, as the wall pierced through the rear bodywork, spewing hot oil on the crew members, who were also under threat from the crash. The car was immensely damaged, and the only part that kept Martin safe was the fact that the wall hit the car’s rear first.

If the impact had been even a little in front, Martin could’ve been fatally injured. The wall pierced through the car’s bodywork, damaging the oil tank and the suspension. There was also a small fire that lit on the rear wheel.

“Lucky for me, it went right behind the door bars, right behind the rear hoop, and just absorbed, it went all the way through there. But if it would have hit the door bars, it would have stopped the car so fast that I think the whip would have been really bad,” Mark Martin recalled the crash on the first episode of the Mark Martin Archive podcast.

Yet, the mere position of the impact on the car saved Martin from what could have been extremely fatal. He was 53 at the time, piloting for Michael Waltrip Racing, and was guaranteed to win the race until this happened. Moreover, he was bothered about completely something else than what you would expect.

“Once the hit happened, and it didn’t even hurt, I was not even sore. And then I was just angry because it was senseless. It was lap cars that caused it.”

He was rather upset that he couldn’t win the race. That anger was understandable. This would have been his first race win since the New Hampshire in 2009. In the same season, he almost won the title. Although there was some hope regarding his future, his performance only went down in the coming seasons.

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What happened to Mark Martin’s performance after 2009?

Despite being one of the most experienced drivers at the time, Martin never actually managed to clinch the NASCAR Cup Series championship. He finished runner-up five times, in 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2009, and that was his best result.

Racing for Hendrick Motorsports in 2009, however, everything seemed to be going his way. Martin won five races that season and had been running quite competitively. However, he lost out to his teammate, Jimmie Johnson, who won his fourth consecutive championship that year.

Post this, Martin never found himself in title-winning contention, or winning a race.

The team had also been focusing more on Johnson, and Martin departed from Hendrick at the end of the 2011 season, joining Michael Waltrip Racing. With them, he managed to clinch a couple of top 10 finishes, finally stepping away from racing at the end of the 2013 season. 

Martin ran close to 900 races throughout his Cup Series career, clinching 40 race wins. But those victories also came with a bunch of crashes, but yet, the one in Michigan is something he still remembers, just like us. The silver lining? He walked away from the crash, and the incident itself triggered NASCAR to work better on the safety elements.