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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Time, eventually, wins. Whether it's racing cars or digging ditches, skills erode, the body weakens and you either retire or can't get rehired.

Mark Martin knows the time nears when he'll be forced to quit racing. What he'll do then, he's unsure. Instead of dreading the moment, as the old Martin would have, the 50-year-old is smiling. Then again, Martin smiles often these days.

After running a part-time Sprint Cup schedule the past two years, Martin returns to full-time duty rejuvenated and with Hendrick Motorsports. This is perhaps Martin's best, and maybe last, chance to win a Daytona 500 and a Cup title.

"In 2000 &ellipses; I thought I was going to get to do this stuff forever," says Martin, who starts today's race second. "You don't think about it. You know? You are in the middle of a haze of just racing and digging and racing and doing everything you can do. Now I can see as clear as a bell. I don't know how many more chances I will have like this. So I am going to try really hard to make the most of it."

And have fun along the way.

•••

Failure defines Martin, its imprint as deep as the lines across his forehead. He's often identified as one of NASCAR's greatest drivers who have never won a Cup championship or a Daytona 500.

He's been runner-up for the title four times, twice losing the crown by less than 40 points. The Daytona 500 also has been painful. Martin lost that race two years ago in one of the closest finishes -- about 5 feet -- in the event's history.

Even as he looks at a career with 35 Cup victories, Martin focuses on the failures. When Hendrick Motorsports announced last summer he would join Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as teammates this season, Martin talked about some of the low points in his career. He recalled being fired in 1983 and standing outside the garage fence at Daytona in 1984 because he had no ride, thus no pass to be in there.

Many would repress such memories but Martin retells them often. The agony of those experiences strengthens him.

"When I first got to Roush and started racing with him," Matt Kenseth says, "everyone said he was miserable and he was. He was never in a good mood. If he finished second, he was mad he didn't win. If he was sixth, he was mad he wasn't fifth."

Worn out and wanting to quit before losing his competitive edge, Martin planned to retire in 2005. Car owner Jack Roush talked him into returning in 2006.

Although Martin finished ninth in the points that season, he later said he ended that year in a "frustrated fog of emotion."

It was time to change.

•••

When Martin reduced his racing schedule beginning in 2007, he planned to spend more time with his teenage son, Matt, and help further his racing career. Matt, though, didn't have his father's passion for the sport and later quit.

Suddenly, Martin had free time. Even with a reduced racing schedule, he had worked on Matt's cars during most of his free time. Martin had time to rest.

"I'd put every ounce that I had into my career from the time I graduated high school until the last day at Homestead in '06," Martin says. "I had to step back and catch my breath and let myself out from under that gun and do some things that I really wanted to do that I felt like racing was standing in the way of."

Not weighed down by constant travel, racing and dealing with disappointments, Martin's demeanor has softened the past two years. It helped he showed he could remain competitive when he raced for Dale Earnhardt Inc.

"I didn't put any emphasis on having fun back in the day," Martin says, "but it's very important to me now, being happy and having fun."

•••

Carl Edwards, considered among the sport's most fit drivers, worked out with Martin two years ago. He hasn't since.

Edwards marvels at how the 135-pound Martin is "seriously in shape."

Martin, who confesses to being obsessive compulsive, describes his workout program as "intense" and knows he needs to be that way to compete against drivers half his age.

A recent Saturday featured Martin doing various workouts from 7:30 a.m. to noon. The workouts included physical and mental training he'll need to get him through this season. Car owner Rick Hendrick says Martin has the body and mental attitude of a 35-year-old.

Martin's attitude and actions also have inspired those around him. Hendrick says with Martin's prodding about workouts and preaching about nutrition that he's lost 20 pounds with a goal to lose 20 more.

"He's got Mr. Hendrick losing weight, Gordon is working out, Junior is working out," says three-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson.

"We all want to do a good job and we all want to help each other be stronger and I think Mark is going to bring a lot to the team from the physical standpoint, mental standpoint and a commitment standpoint."

•••

There is the suggestion that Martin isn't fierce enough to win a championship, that he's not mean enough on the track.

He's not known for bumping a driver out of the way to win a race and when he wins that way, he laments those victories. Martin quickly recalls a Bristol race he won when he and Davey Allison hit while racing for the lead and Allison spun.

"That win doesn't mean anything to me because that's not how I wanted to win that race," Martin says. "I didn't feel good about that where so many of the others I could be proud of. It's how I feel when I lay down at the end of the day that matters the most. I can tell you that I want to win really, really bad."

Just as he wants this Daytona 500. He doesn't come out and say it. He never would but he hints at his hunger.

"Everything else that I've done in my career would fit around this," Martin says of a Daytona 500 victory. "If things go our way, then maybe we'll have a chance again here Sunday."

Former teammate Greg Biffle said two days before the Daytona 500 that Martin had one of the three best cars he's seen on the track. Gordon says this could be a special year for his teammate.

"I think,'' Gordon says, "this is a year of opportunity for him to do things that he's never done before, possibly winning the Daytona 500 and other races and even going for that championship."

And that would be fun for Martin.

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dustin.long@news-record.com