ON Deck: Hat's off to Mike Martin

Hats off to Yuma's Mike Martin.

After leaving Yuma in 1999 to go sprint car racing, the “Magic Man” got into victory lane for the first time in an AMSOIL USAC-CRA National Sprint Car event, winning the 12th annual Parker Store Arizona Hall of Fame Classic on Saturday at Canyon Speedway Park outside Peoria.

The cool part is Martin led every lap of the 30-lap feature event. He started outside the front row, beat pole sitter R.J. Johnson into Turn 1 and never looked back.

OK, he probably did look back every chance he got to see where the USAC big dogs were, drivers like Dave Darland, Jon Stanbrough, Nic Faas, Robert Ballou and Jeremy Sherman.

But the fact of the matter is nobody had enough to chase down Martin, who protected the bottom line, weaved his way through lapped traffic untouched, and got to the checkered flag first.

“Everything turned out perfectly,” said Martin. And how.