Last February, Mark Martin showed off a wall with trophies and racing memorabilia displayed floor to ceiling in his Daytona Beach office.

“You know, I’ve had an incredible career,” he said, emotion filling his voice. “But it’s time to slow down, to be with my family more and start enjoying what I’ve been able to accomplish.”

The plan was for the 46-year-old Martin to make the 2005 season – supposedly his last in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series – a tribute to the fans who have cheered him through a career in which Martin has won 35 races and finished second in the points four times.

No more Cup grind, with 38 weeks of racing each year. But Martin, who still loves driving a race car, was working on putting together a team for NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck series and had plans to run a handful of Busch Series events, as well.

Another part of Martin’s plan was to finish in Cup with a flourish, leaving Jack Roush, the team owner who has been his friend and biggest supporter since the two got together in 1988, with a third straight title.

Martin made it easily into the 10-man field for the Chase for the championship. He stands seventh, 118 points behind leader Tony Stewart, after winning Sunday at Kansas City in the fourth of 10 races in the playoff-style format.

Now he and the rest of the Cup drivers head back to Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., where Martin won a non-points event in May.

But whatever happens in Saturday night’s UAW-GM Quality 500 and the rest of this season, it will not be Martin’s swan song in Cup, after all.

Roush decided Jamie McMurray was the driver he wanted to take Martin’s place, but McMurray, under contract to Chip Ganassi, isn’t available until 2007. Instead of finding an interim driver, Roush persuaded a reluctant Martin to stay for another year.

“I didn’t have to beg him,” Roush said. “He saw the need we had, and he agreed to it.”

Even winning a points race for the first time in more than a year and getting back into the championship fray has not made Martin, an inveterate pessimist, particularly happy.

Asked if the victory in Kansas makes the thought of racing again in 2006 more exciting, Martin shook his head, grimaced and said, “You know that I use strange psychology on myself.

“It really doesn’t (make it more exciting), because I know how hard this all is.

“I can’t tell you how hard my team and I have had to work to do this,” he added. “One of the ways I was able to find enough to do it here this year is because I thought it was the last, and I don’t know where I’ll find that (next year). I don’t know if I can find that much again next year.”

Meanwhile, winning the championship that has eluded him for so long would be a gift that Martin would cherish for the rest of his life, but, more important to him would be winning it for Roush and his crew.

“The win (Sunday) was not the most exciting of my career,” Martin said. “It was one that is well deserved by my team and, as long as I live, I will remember it for the feeling that it feels like to give it to my team.

“They’re the ones that I went to a year ago and said, ‘Guys, please, let’s keep this team together so that I can have one last shot at this thing.’ So, no matter what happens from here on out, we’ve had a great year. We won at Kansas. We won the All-Star race (in May). We made the Chase. Those guys are my heroes.”

The feeling is mutual.

Pat Tryson, Martin’s crew chief, said the driver has made the difference this season.

“He’s just a really, really classy guy. Really, he’s carried us more than we’ve carried him, but there’s just a lot of mutual respect between him and our whole team, and that’s probably what makes it work,” Tryson explained.

So how hard is it going to be to keep the crew of the No. 6 Ford together for one more run in 2006?

“They were all pretty much lined up to stay with Mark for his last year, so now we have to do the same thing for this year and try to get them all to stay again,” Tryson said. “It might be a little harder this year, but I’m sure we’ll get at least most of them to stay. I know I’m not going anywhere.”

To his chagrin, neither is Mark Martin.