Martin eyes possible Roush return

Mark Martin said he was leaving the book open on possibly returning to Roush Racing. Next year, Martin will race 20 Nextel Cup points races in Chevrolets for MB2 Motorsports, plus two Cup special events. He'll also race Chevrolets in a partial Busch Series schedule. He will, he said, maintain a tie to Fords, which he's competed in for the last 19 years for owner Jack Roush, by way of a limited schedule of "five to 10" Craftsman Truck races in F-150s fielded by Wood Brothers/JTG Racing. But after he won Friday night's Ford 200 Craftsman Truck Series race in Roush's No. 6 Ford, Martin said who knew what the future would hold?

"This is sweet," Martin said. "Jack and I have done this a lot together and Sunday is our last chance, for a while anyway. You never know what'll happen in the future. I've seen a lot of crazy things happen over there."

After that statement, it almost appeared that Roush, who claimed he was unable to provide a schedule in Fords that was acceptable to Martin, was rationalizing his surrogate son's loss to the organization.

"I listen to Mark and I've learned things that sometimes that he says publicly that I haven't heard privately," Roush said. "I would look forward to negotiating with Mark for a return back to the Ford world and Roush Racing for anything that he would be interested in running for a championship [because] he's a championship man. But, 19 years we've been doing this in Busch cars, Cup cars — of course, Cup cars first and then Busch cars and now trucks, and of course, this year it was all three. To win the first race for the F-150, to win the last race with the F-150, and to win six races with the No. 6 truck, there's some kind of karma there.

"I'm not sure what all that means, but it's pretty special. Mark is leaving Roush Racing, but he's not leaving Jack as a friend. We'll be friends as long as we live, I'm sure. It was a particular joy that we were able to share that here tonight with our friends from Ford."

(Martin again).."I still will be friends with all my crew and all the people in the garage and with Jack Roush and everything else. Things are just gonna be a little bit different, but they're not gonna change. Like, if I was walking away and never gonna drive again, I would assume that I would be somewhat more emotional [but] I'm not prepared to do that as well as I'm not prepared to go truck racing only. I still hold my own with these guys on a good day and I still want to go to the Daytona 500 and try to win it, and I think that we can so we'll go after it." nascar.com