By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Though he never ran a full season of national NASCAR racing, it was a tough decision for Justin Marks to step away.
Announcing via Twitter, Marks will retire from NASCAR at the conclusion of the weekend’s action from the Charlotte ROVAL. Here, he competed in the XFINITY Series event on Saturday, finishing second, and starts 31st for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race Sunday.
The decision came over the summer, where the 37-year-old came to an initial realization that family had to come first.
“I had some tough moments leaving my kids,” Marks told Kickin’ The Tires. “I don’t want to say it was something methodical and thought-out. I was just going with the gut instinct. I truly feel it is the right decision.”
Struggling to support his family off his racing responsibilities, Marks said that business and racing could no longer be balanced.
“The last six years of my career, I have not supported my family with [racing],” he said. “It’s not what dad does to put food on the table. When the kids start to grow older and get bummed out about dad leaving for the track for four days, it’s had to look them in the eye and tell them I’m doing this for the family. That played a big role in it.”
Marks is surprised by how long it took before this decision was made. Marks runs the GoPro Motorplex, a go-kart course in North Carolina, while also working with an import distribution company and a promotions company.
“I wasn’t supporting my family because I was working really hard to build my businesses,” he said. “When I wasn’t in the car — we opened the Motorplex in 2012. I’ve spent the last couple years building those businesses. I always considered that being my career.”
Marks’ initial view on balancing outside business with racing did not span past the two-year mark.
“When we started on these businesses, I figured I had 18 months left of driving,” he said. “They were going to be so much work that I wouldn’t be able to drive. I felt if I put the right people in place and the right structures and empowered those people to do their job, I could live in the middle.
“But I have ambitions and business investing that lay way beyond what we’re done at the Motorplex and go-karting racing. To really give 100 percent to those, I can’t be in a driver suit here anymore.”
Marks was dubbed an “all-around racer” during his time in NASCAR, bringing years of sports car and endurance racing to his stock car career. And though he never ran for a NASCAR championship, Marks is dubious on how success may have played a part in his decision in 2018.
In 2016, Marks’ first opportunity with Chip Ganassi kicked off, running a total of 17 of 33 events for the Chevrolet team in the XFINITY Series. And while he scored his one and only victory that year at Mid-Ohio, he failed to finish in the top 10 otherwise.
A lack of success during this opportunity, along with his current age, made Marks think twice about moving further in NASCAR.
“To get opportunities in this sport, to go all the way to the top and be one of the great stars, those opportunities are one-tenth of one percent,” he said. “A lot of those fates are sealed way before those guys are in their Cup rides.
“For me, I’m 37 years old. If I had a lot of success and I was winning races with Chip two years ago, I still was 35. I still wouldve said, ‘What am I chasing here?’ The Cup rookies are 20 years old.”
Additionally, funding has always kept Marks on his toes. And some of that reality came following his Mid-Ohio win in 2016.
“A big eye-opener for me: I won that race at Mid-Ohio in 2016 and I didn’t get any opportunities. The phone didn’t ring for me after that to drive racecars,” he said. “That’s the economic model of the sport right now. These owners just aren’t sitting on piles of cash to put whoever they want into racecars.
“That was a moment where I said, ‘I can rip off 10 wins in a row here and it’s probably not going to matter to me.'”
Though the attention from team owners was disappointing for Marks, he will end his NASCAR career feeling wanted. After announcing his final weekend on Twitter, Marks has since felt the support in the NASCAR garage.
“Way more than I thought. Humbling, honestly,” he said of the reaction. “I put a tweet out there saying it was going to be my last race. That wasn’t necessarily because I wanted to tell everybody, it was because I wanted some self-accountability. I wanted to put it out there so I couldn’t just get sucked back in.”
Marks felt validation following this wave of support.
“I thought in my head that nobody was going to care that Justin Marks wasn’t going to be in a racecar anymore,” he said. “But it’s awesome. It proves that the sacrifices and commitments I made in this sport for 20 years have all been worth it.”
Closing out the Weathertech SportsCar Championship at Road Atlanta, Marks is unsure of his future in sports car racing.
“I’m a little undecided at the moment,” he said. “I enjoy driving in that and I’ve got a great opportunity with Acura. But I don’t know. The more I think about it, the more I think I’m closing in on that moment where my racing is going to be at my local short track, just fun stuff here and there.”
But he is certain on what form of motorsport will have his attention going forward.
“I will go race locally, where I started when I was 20 years old for fun,” he said. “But I’m done getting on planes on Wednesdays and back on Sundays.”
Though he’s done flying from track to track, he, instead, will continue flying from mountain to mountain. An avid outdoorsman and climber, Marks has taken his skills international over the years and is still eying a climb of Mount Everest in 2020.
“I climbed this summer for some technical training,” he said. “If I have some more time now, I will be able to do some work, try to put some international trips together next year. If they go well, it could be a 2020 project.”
But before he leaves for short track racing and climbs of 29,000-plus feet, Marks’ impact on NASCAR is one worth mentioning. Though he saw Victory Lane once in 79 total national starts, his impact came off the track, where he has sent high praise of NASCAR to other sports car talents. And some have given it a crack since.
“You can talk until you’re blue in the face about how the cars drive and how different they are,” he said. “The biggest difference is the culture and mentality. It’s a very different collective psychology among the drivers and the culture in the garage. That’s where people come from different sides and they get so surprised. It’s such a different culture. That’s what I tell people the most. Get ready for this, get ready for that.
“These are all great racecar drivers, they will learn how to drive the car. They figure it out. But getting used to the flow of the weekend, interactions with other drivers, pit stops, restarts. That’s where the learning curve is.”
With a footprint pressed in the past and present times of the sport, Marks will undoubted]bly miss his time behind the wheel and feels its nothing short of a privilege to end his career racing in the Cup Series.
“I’m a road racer and I’m ending my NASCAR career on a road course,” he said. “I’m ending it in the XFINITY Series with the team I won my only win with and I’m finishing it off with the Cup team I made my first Cup start with and I have my own local company on the racecar.
“I didn’t really plan it that way. This is it. This is the perfect way to end it. Of course I will miss it. But I know it’s the right decision. I have goals and aspirations and talents that go beyond the racecar. To take full advantage of those, I have to reinvent myself.”
(Below is a video capture of our conversation with Justin Marks)
