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Martin (pronounced Mar-teen) Cardenas grew up outside of Medellin, Colombia, and started racing motocross when he was 11 years old. He started winning races right away on 80cc machinery. Two years later, in 1995, he went to race a 125, but he was not old enough according to the regulations. So he took his 80, bored it out to 105, beat everyone in the 125cc class and won the
championship!
Cardenas repeated as champion the following year on a real 125cc machine. He
continued to win championships in motocross over the next few years, and in
2000 came to the U.S. and raced selected rounds of the AMA series.
In 2001, Martin traveled to Spain for a road race tryout in the competitive CEV
National Series, and with a good result landed a ride for the 2002 season. For
2003, Martin earned a ride with the Luis d’Antin Yamaha team in the Spanish
series, finishing 7th, while also winning the Latin American Supersport
Championship in Colombia. He earned the Supersport Championship the following
year in the CEV series with the Promo Racing team.
Cardenas made his debut in the MotoGP 250cc World Championship class in 2005
with teammate Chaz Davies on the Aprilia Germany team, scoring points in enough
events to be offered a ride on one of the top Spanish teams. The 2006 250cc
Grand Prix season saw Martin start with the private Wurth Honda BQR team, but
he was offered a ride with the factory Repsol Honda team when fellow South
American Sebastian Porto retired. Unfortunately, Cardenas crashed during the
first race weekend and broke his collarbone. He raced several more events, but
the collarbone never healed correctly and he was unable to ride at full
strength.
Martin moved to the U.S. when a friend of his offered him a ride on a Kawasaki ZX-10R in the AMA Superstock Series. He competed on it in the first three events, but switched to a 600 at the Infineon Raceway event, and was offered a ride to fill in for Michael Barnes when Barnes crashed and broke his wrist on Saturday of that event.
Since then, Martin has scored two podiums in Supersport and four top-five finishes and a podium in Formula Xtreme.
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