TOWN OF RUTLAND – Long before the first of his 1,143 NASCAR races, a teenage dirt-tracker from Arkansas came to the Upper Midwest to learn to race stock cars.

Mark Martin took on the likes of Dick Trickle, Joe Shear, Mike Eddy and Bob Senneker racing on tracks like Salem and Winchester in Indiana, the Dells and La Crosse in Wisconsin and the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in the ARTGO Challenge Series and the American Speed Association series. He earned rookie of the year in ASA at age 18, won three championships and then came back for one more before his NASCAR career took off.

These days, at age 66, 12 years after the end of his Hall of Fame career, Martin was revisiting his old stomping grounds, including a May 3-4 stop at Madison International Speedway for the ASA Midwest Tour Joe Shear Classic.

After thousands of autographs and conversations, he stopped for a couple of quick questions from reporters.

Question: You seem to be doing more of these appearances. Is there a plan behind this or is it just the way things are coming together?

Answer: I lived in Montana for five years, and it’s too far to come from Montana, but I moved back to Arkansas, and my heart’s really with the Wisconsin race fans and the Wisconsin racing culture. So, yes, I’ll be at Kaukauna June 19th, and I’ll be coming up next year and the year after, quite a bit. It’s just this is the foundation of my career.

What’s it like? I bet you haven’t seen some of these people in 40 years.

I do, and that’s really great, but I also just really want to give back to the racing family and culture and the racers and the fans and all that that really had a big hand in shaping my career.

You’ve become really active and opinionated on social media. Has that just developed? Is this a new Mark Martin or a new phase for you?

I just started to get tired of the Kool Aid drinkers. I’m not beholden to anyone and most everybody that’s on there is beholden to someone, and honestly, I’m just trying to be a voice for the classic race fans because they don’t have as big a voice as mine. So I’m trying to be their voice.

Joe Shear, what are your memories of him?

Joe and I raced for years and years and years, and both of us had beautiful race cars, the two prettiest cars at the track, and neither one of us ever put a tire mark on each other all those years of racing, and we’d raced a lot of times. He beat me a lot of times. We raced hard, we raced clean, and we built pretty race cars.

If you had one guy from back in the day that you could race against one more time, who would it be?

Probably (the late) Tom Reffner. I loved Tom Reffner, loved him with all my heart. He was so good to me. You know, he was senior to me and when I was a kid I came in, they all treated me with respect, but Tom was just golden.