Yes, he’s 45 years old, and no driver past that age has won a Winston Cup championship.

True, he did not celebrate his first Winston Cup victory until his 279th career start, and his father a farmer first and racer second went zero-for-165 in a part-time career spent skirmishing from midpack back.

Sterling Marlin has occupied the top spot in the 2002 Winston Cup points standings since Feb. 24.

Inevitably, the ascendant memory of his season to date would not show him celebrating in Victory Lane, as he has done twice, but climbing from his car late in the Daytona 500 to pull a crumpled fender from a tire.

But is Sterling Marlin really as improbable a title contender as his career to date suggests?

How long must Marlin’s silver No. 40 Coors Light Dodge race beneath the radar before he’s regarded as a bona fide threat?

Marlin, whose third-place Pepsi 400 finish increased his points lead heading into Sunday’s Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland, insists that those who are surprised didn’t pay attention last year.

“We were leading the points, [fell] back to seventh and [climbed] back to third,” Marlin said. “Going into this year, with the momentum we built, I felt we could win four, five races and be right there.”

Marlin will concede this: “If you’d told me at this time last year that I’d win four races in a time [span] when Jeff Gordon won none, I’d have said you’re nuts.”

But the arrival of Chip Ganassi as primary team owner in 2000, followed by a switch to Dodge from Chevrolet to start the 2001 season, has tardily elevated Marlin to a career peak.

The giant strides in the past 18 months are even more impressive coming, as they do, on the heels of four fruitless seasons in which an exasperated Marlin achieved a total of five top-five finishes.

His down-home farm boy upbringing and uphill struggle for stardom have shaped the popular Tennesseean.

Mechanical failure early in the road race at Sonoma, Calif., two weeks ago consigned Marlin to a last-place finish and more tightly bunched the cluster of challengers “nipping at our heels.”

But Marlin managed a “what-the-heck” grin moments after he parked and exhibited a shrugging “whatever will be, will be” demeanor that will serve him well in a tense duel for the championship.

The peripheral fans of a sport whose popularity keeps mushrooming might do well to get to know him better.

Born to race

This is Sterling Marlin.

He’s 14, too young to get into the garage area at Daytona, “hanging on the fence, looking pitiful.”

Bill Gazaway, then NASCAR’s competition director, takes pity. He allows the son of Clifton “Coo Coo” Marlin to beat the age rap and help his father’s makeshift crew.

That’s how Sterling, at 15, happened to be the right-side tire changer when Coo Coo achieved his career highlight with a nonpoints victory in a 125-mile qualifying race in 1973.

This is Sterling Marlin.

He’s stretching his local-tracks race budget in Columbia, Tenn.

“There was a time running at Nashville that I had $3,000 from the sponsor for the whole year,” Marlin said. “If you’d win on Saturday, you made money. If you finished second, you broke even. If you finished third, you lost money.”

Marlin won “like 14 of 16” features in one stretch.

This is Sterling Marlin.

After 12 Winston Cup starts over six seasons, he gets a shot at a full-time ride with Roger Hamby’s shoestring team in 1983.

He drives from racetrack to racetrack in what he now calls a “suitcase on wheels,” trying to carve a niche. He manages one top-10 finish. He persists.

The breakthrough

More years pass, sprinkled with runner-up finishes. Then Marlin scored his breakthrough Winston Cup victory.

It came in the 1994 Daytona 500, in Marlin’s first race steering the yellow No. 4 Kodak Chevrolet that dominated superspeedway racing in the early 1990s. Marlin won the same race the following year. Then he celebrated twice at Talladega after the second 1995 race and again after the first race in 1996.

Those represented four of a modest six career victories before Ganassi branched out to Winston Cup. Felix Sabates retained part of the team but shed the financial burdens.

Sabates, who brought Marlin aboard as “a veteran driver I thought could win races and finish high in the points every year,” laughed heartedly at the enjoyment he’s deriving from his reduced role.

“Every morning I get up and light a candle and put it in front of Chip’s picture,” he cracked.

Marlin is no less appreciative. Now he can go to a racetrack every week believing victory’s within reach, and he expects to be around for a while.

“I will probably run another four, five years,” he said. “I still feel good. And Harry Gant was still winning races when he was 51, 52 years old.”

Just as likely, a championship for the improbable contender would be popular even among rivals.

As Marlin said after that ’94 Daytona 500 victory, “Man, it took long enough to get here!”

That spoke to his patience and his perseverance. So does the stature he’s attaining at an advance stage when racing careers usually are on the down slope.