Throughout the 1960s, Robbins spent his weekends either performing to sold-out crowds or racing at the Nashville Fairgrounds, sometimes doing both in the same night – running the Saturday feature race and then sprinting across town to make his regular appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, he eventually asked for the last spot on the Opry specifically so he’d have enough time to race, get cleaned up, and make it over there to that bend in the Cumberland River. The image of that is almost too good: a man in a firesuit arriving slightly breathless to sing "El Paso" to an auditorium full of people who had watched a series of rhinestone singers, with no idea where he'd just been.

He made his NASCAR Grand National debut on July 30, 1966, in a race at Nashville that Richard Petty won.Robbins finished 25th out of 28 cars, nursing an oil leak, which I think is a strong way to start a motorsports career – humbled, but not deterred. Over the next 13 years, he competed in 35 races between 1966 and 1982, scoring one top-five and six top-tens.

He drove what must be the coolest car in series history. His cars were built and maintained by NASCAR Hall of Famer Cotton Owens (these names!). They wore a distinctive two-toned magenta and chartreuse paint scheme that was, much like everything else about Marty Robbins, impossible to ignore and entirely his own. Seriously, these cars and their paint schemes scream, “Hurry up! I gotta get to the Opry after this.”

Was Marty Robbins any good at racing?

The statistics tell a respectable story. His best finish came at Michigan International Speedway's Motor State 400, where he finished fifth.He had strong runs at Darlington, where two of his top-10 finishes came, and at Talladega, where he belonged less as a celebrity novelty and more as a legitimate competitor.
But the numbers don't tell the most endearing and enduring part of who Robbins was on and off the track. At the 1974 Charlotte 500, Robbins deliberately drove his car into the wall rather than broadside *through* Richard Childress's stopped car on the racing surface.He took 37 stitches to the face, a broken tailbone, several broken ribs, and two black eyes. Childress later said Robbins may have saved his life. That is not the act of a man who showed up for the attention. That is a racing driver.
NASCAR

"I know this. No one had a better time at the racetrack than Marty Robbins. He was so happy to be at the racetrack. He wasn't a singing star when he was with us in the garage. He was just one of the guys. That's why people always liked him so much." - Richard Petty

The garage knew it too. Richard Petty, who befriended Robbins and helped keep his fellow Dodge driver in good equipment, said of him: "No one had a better time at the racetrack than Marty Robbins. He wasn't a singing star when he was with us in the garage. He was just one of the guys."Bobby Allison, who had a famous door-to-door Labor Day battle with Robbins at the Nashville Fairgrounds that locals still talk about, said he had real, raw talent and the rarer quality of knowing how to listen. In a sport where respect is the only currency that matters, Marty Robbins was solvent.

He kept racing until the very end. His last NASCAR start came on Nov. 7, 1982, at the Atlanta Journal 500, in a Junior Johnson-built Buick Regal.He died one month and one day later, on December 8, 1982, of heart failure – his third major cardiac event, the first having come in 1969 when he became, at that time, the first person to undergo a triple bypass operation. He had kept performing and racing after that, too, because that was the only pace he knew.
Courtesy of Mecum Acutions

The following year, NASCAR named the race at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville the Marty Robbins 420 in his honor. It ended in a fitting 1-2 finish by Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison – two of his oldest Nashville rivals, who understood exactly what they were racing for that afternoon.

There is a firesuit on display at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and a movie poster on display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. No other man has earned a place in both rooms. I know I said at the top that Marty Robbins lived two lives, but he didn’t. He lived one life; one very full life. Hats off for the speeding, singing cowboy.