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 The 8-year-old rising fourth-grader was more interested in other
sports, and those interests carried him though South Iredell High
School as a soccer player, wrestler and boxer.
It wasn't until friends persuaded him to attend a race at Charlotte
Motor Speedway that Martinez first became acquainted with NASCAR.
And then he was hooked.
"What I liked about it was the competition, the adrenaline rush,"
Martinez told the NASCAR Wire Service in advance of his home race
this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
He decided to become a part of it.
Martinez used his athletic ability to develop skills as a
tire-changer. He was a quick study, and he found a way to translate
his background in other sports into his new vocation.
"The soccer part is the footwork," Martinez said. "The wrestling is
the concentration and how well you prepare for the weekend, and then
the boxing skills are just your hand-eye coordination basically --
when you change tires and you hit the lug nuts."
And Martinez' Hispanic background also proved useful, when Mexican
driver Daniel Suarez advanced to the NASCAR Xfinity and Camping
World Truck Series. Though Martinez currently changes tires for BK
Racing in the Sprint Cup Series, he also performs the same role for
Suarez' No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Truck Series team.
As Suarez was learning English, Martinez was part of his support
group.
"There's only a few Hispanics in the sport," said Martinez, who like
Suarez is a product of NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program. "I
understand how it's hard for him. There's a language barrier there,
just the way you have to explain stuff to the crew chief. I think
the hardest part is the language barrier and having to explain
yourself really well."
Eduardo "Eddie" Troconis, a native of Mexico, also was a vital part
of Suarez' early success, because he could communicate with the
driver in Spanish.
"They really wanted me to be a part of his team this year -- be a
coach, give a little advice ... and when he had a hard time
understanding because of the language barrier," said Troconis, who
served as a race engineer for the No. 51 team earlier this season.
"At the beginning of the year, he spoke very little English, but now
he can carry himself. When he was trying to express what the car was
doing, that's what I was there for."
Now that Suarez has improved his English-language proficiency
dramatically, Troconis has moved on to a crew chief's role with
KBM's No. 54 Toyota, with drivers Christopher Bell and Gray
Gaulding. But he still lends engineering support to the No. 51 team,
and he remains close with Suarez and Martinez.
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"I've worked with Pedro already several years, and he's done really
great for himself," said Troconis, who raced Indy Lights before
embarking on a varied career in NASCAR racing. "He's a kid who
didn't have nothing, but he's a fighter. He's a fighter, and he
wants to make it.
"Daniel is the same. He knew that he really needed to turn around
the image of the Mexican drivers that were not able to make it in
the United States. He's really impressed a lot of people with his
driving skills and his learning skills -- the language, and on and
off the race track."
Troconis' father ran a race team in Mexico, but Troconis sacrificed
what would have been a secure future in his native country to
venture into NASCAR racing. In his early days in the sport, he
worked for Bob Keselowski, and before he was situated, he slept in
the race shop.
By the time Troconis arrived at KBM, he had performed just about
every job possible on a race car, from front-end mechanic to setup
man to shock specialist to race engineer to car chief. And it was
Troconis whom Suarez sought out when he came to the States.
"When I moved to the United States, I knew that Eddie was here,"
Suarez said. "I knew his dad very well. His dad told me he had been
here for a while, and anything you need, look for him."
Suarez didn't get to know Martinez until they teamed up together.
"With Pedro, I didn't know a lot about him until about a year, year
and a half ago," Suarez said. "And I'm amazed. It's really cool to
see all these Latin American people who have come to this sport and
are doing good things, like Eddie, Pedro and myself."
About the only good thing that hasn't come Suarez's way is a victory
in one of NASCAR's top national series.
But if hard work and perseverance are major contributing factors, a
win will come -- perhaps as early as this weekend, when Suarez does
double duty at Texas Motor Speedway, as NASCAR returns to Martinez'
native state.
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