The 2006 Auto Club 500

Mark ran to a ninth-place finish in Sunday’s Auto Club 500 at California Mark overtakes Jeff Burton

Speedway. Mark ran his AAA Ford Fusion inside the top 10 for virtually the entire race and inside the top five for 121 laps of the 250 lap event. Several late cautions down the stretch would prove detrimental to Mark’s bid at a top-five finish, but he was able to hang on for a top-10, while gaining five positions to sixth in the Nextel Cup point standings.

“We actually had a pretty good car today,” said Mark after the race. “We ran inside the top five for most of the race and I’m not sure we had the car to win it, but we probably could have gotten a top-five finish at least if we hadn’t of had so many cautions there at the end.

“Still, it’s a top-10 finish and we’ll take it and move on to Las Vegas in a couple of weeks where we should be strong again and hopefully we can contend for the win there.”

Mark started 10th and with the exception of a handful of laps early would run inside the top-10 for the entire race. He broke into the top-five for the first time on lap 97 and would advance all the way to second place by lap 126. Running in second Mark stayed out an extra lap once green-flag pitting started and earned five bonus points by leading lap 136. Once the stops had cycled back through, he was back in second by lap 144 and he would run there until coming into the pits under green on lap 181.

The car’s handling started to loosen up by lap 193, with Mark running in third position. He came into the pits under the day’s third caution on lap 214 to take four tires, fuel and make an adjustment to tighten up the car’s handling. Despite a quick stop of 13.95 second, Mark lost one position in the pits and returned in fifth place as one car opted to stay out.

After another quick caution, Mark dropped back to seventh place, but was honing in on fifth and sixth, before another late caution halted his momentum and set up a green-white-checkered finish. Mark restarted in seventh position, but was shuffled out four wide, losing two positions rather than risking a late accident, Mark moved on to the ninth-place finish.

With the finish, Mark advanced five places to sixth in the points, 80 points out of first and 12 points out of fifth.

The No. 6 AAA Team enjoyed a great day in the pits turning in seven stops, all under 13.9 seconds, including a 13.16-second stop on lap 197.