Talk about déjà vu. I sure hope that this will be a recurring theme in the months to come. It seems surreal to me, I am not sure why. I woke up this morning wondering if Mark Martin really won that race or if it was only a dream.

It wasn’t in dominating fashion that he won. It was definitely different from Phoenix where he led several times. Martin took the lead, by default, on lap 322 when he, along with six others, stayed out after a caution. Martin led the next 42 laps and won the race but what shocked me the most was how he almost effortlessly held off a charging Jimmie Johnson.

Johnson seemed to have a very strong car on the restart and caught Martin several times going into the corners but he could never quite make the pass. It was pretty amazing to watch the action. Most definitely one of the best races I have seen in a long time.

I just love to watch Martin race. He is a clean, good racer. He knows when he has a good car and drives it hard, just like he did on Saturday night. Watching him hold off a much younger man who was running him down hard was just amazing. Its wonderful to see him back on top and driving the way I knew he could all along. This is the first time since 1999 that Mark Martin has had a season with more than one race win. However, people tend to forget just how close he’s come several times to that very elusive win that he finally claimed this year at Phoenix. I could bring up the one that should have been his but I won’t…

At any rate, I don’t think you can argue with the fact that Mark Martin is one of the best there is. He has a total of 92 wins across all three of NASCAR’s top series, 37 of those wins have come in Cup, 7 in the Camping World Series, and 48 in Nationwide. He jumped from 15th to 11th in the standings and he has got a real shot to make the Chase this year, even contend for the Cup Championship. He had a rough start to the season but the win at Phoenix shot him up from 18th to 13th in the points standings. He dropped back a bit after that but he is back in the hunt now and I believe that he’s going to stay there and I really do believe he will make it to the Chase this season.

It was so cool to watch some old school style racing on Saturday night at the Southern 500. I have loved every minute of watching Mark race and I hope we’ll see many more wins from him this season!