50-year-old Mark Martin will make his 1000th NASCAR start tonight in the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers will make his 746th start in the series. Add that to his 231 NASCAR Nationwide Series starts and 23 starts in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and you get that crazy 1000 number.

Only two other drivers, Richard Petty and Michael Waltrip, have reached that number.

“I honestly didn’t know this milestone was coming until I had a few reporters bring it up lately,” said Martin. “Wow. That’s a lot of races. I didn’t realize that I was even close to that many. To me, personally, 1,000 starts is not that big of a deal. How many wins I have in those 1,000 starts would be a stat I would be more interested in. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is great, but I don’t view starting races as a huge accomplishment.”

Well, in his 28-year career, Martin has wracked up 94 NASCAR victories including 39 Sprint Cup victories, 48 Nationwide Series wins and 7 Camping World Truck Series wins, which means that Martin has won nearly 10 percent of the races he has started, certainly not a bad record.

Over the years, Martin has seen the sport and its drivers change dramatically.

“The attention that the sport has gotten has grown about 10 times over. The media coverage. The fan support. Everything has grown so much. But nothing has changed how I feel about the sport,” he said. “(Regarding the drivers) I can’t really compare them. The way I’ve viewed drivers, both then and now, is through my own eyes. It’s hard today to recognize who will be heroes 20 years from now. When I first started, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison, those guys were already heroes in my eyes.”

Martin has risen from a star-struck, young scrapper who was racing against his personal heroes to being the hero of millions and with four wins under his belt already this season he shows no signs of stopping.

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