Martin intense, involved in driver development team

ELLISVILLE, Fla. -- Saturday was a long day at Columbia Motorsports Park, but Mark Martin, with a veteran's savvy and candor, summed it up in one succinct sentence.

He was addressing a disconsolate Ricky Carmichael, who took a DNF in Saturday night's Super Late Model race after completing less than one-third of the 25-lap feature on the half-mile oval.

Carmichael begins on the FASCAR track

They say he has the talent; all he needs is the seat time. Ricky Carmichael's stock-car debut proved invaluable as he makes the transition from motorcycles.

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"Don't get caught up in the results," Martin said before leaving the rural Florida short track at about 11 p.m. Saturday. "Latch onto what you learned, because that's what's important."

Carmichael learned he could race cars, but after bouncing off the wall four or five times between practice, his first stock-car heat race and the feature -- along with doing a "whoop-de-do" style vault over the back of a competitor's racecar --he knows there's a lot of ground yet to cover.

Before that occurs, Saturday marked a couple of important milestones in motorsports, though one was a baby step and the other a monumental chasm.

The first was Carmichael, 27, the 15-time AMA motocross and supercross champion, making his first start in a stock car as part of Ginn Racing's driver development program. Carmichael finished 11th of 12 cars after hitting the wall on the backstretch entering Turn 3 on about the seventh green-flag lap.

Team owner Bobby Ginn, who initially went to the wrong North Florida backwoods racetrack but arrived in plenty of time for Carmichael's third-place finish in his heat race, plans to have the native Floridian in one of his Nextel Cup Series cars when his gradual development curve culminates.

But Carmichael's debut paled in relation to the second, and most major event, specifically a continuance of the realization that Martin's streak of 621 consecutive weeks of competing at a Cup Series racetrack was over. (Continued)