The 2004 Bass Pro Shop/MBNA 500

It was trick and treat for Mark and the Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) Race Mark leads the pack in Atlanta

Team during Sunday’s Bass Pro Shops 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on Halloween Sunday. For Mark the trick was coming up just short of the win. The treat however, was turning in a dominating performance that saw Mark lead 227 of 325 laps, while gaining a whopping 143 points on first place. The strong run propelled Mark right back in the middle of the Chase for the Nextel Cup, with Mark going from 224 to only 81 points behind first place with three races remaining in the season.

“We had a great car today and it was just a great effort by the Viagra® Racing Team,” said Mark. “We just have such a great team. The team effort is just incredible. I have the best guys I've ever had to work with in my racing career and it really showed today. We had fantastic pit stops and the whole works."

Mark was in the lead and firmly in control of the race when the day’s fifth caution was called on lap 300 with just 25 laps remaining. The caution forced Mark to stay out, while the other cars behind him came in for fresh tires. Mark had held as much as an eight second lead on second place and had lapped all but eight of the other cars in the race, but he got caught up in lapped traffic on the restart and faced an uphill battle going against the fresh tires.

A near tangle with the lapped car of teammate Greg Biffle, gave the No. 48 of Jimmie Johnson just enough of a window to get around Mark on lap 310, just one lap before the day’s sixth and final caution was issued. Mark came in under caution to take four fresh tires and restarted in sixth place with only 10 laps remaining. Mark would make a valiant effort to reclaim the lead slicing through the field and back into second place by lap 320 of the 325-lap event and closing on leader Jimmie Johnson. However, Mark would come up just short of the win and have to settle for second place on a day where the No. 6 car was clearly and without a doubt the class of the field.

Mark started the race seventh but struggled with a loose handling car at the onset. In fact Mark dropped all the way to 16th place by just the sixth lap of the race. Once the car settled in Mark began a meticulous march to the front. By lap 21 he had moved the Viagra® Ford back inside the top 10. On lap 37 Mark moved inside the top five as he continued his march to the front. By lap 75 Mark had driven the No. 6 to the front of the field. Mark took the lead and proceeded to simply drive away from the field. With the exception of time on pit road, Mark would keep the lead for the next 235 laps until surrendering it to Johnson on lap 310.

Mark built as much as an eight and a half second lead as he paced the Mark in the 2004 Bass Pros Shop MBNA 500

Mark in the 2004 Bass Pros Shop MBNA 500

field for the remainder of the day. The No. 6 Viagra® pit crew did its part as well, keeping its lead on pit road during several key stops, including stops of 13.71 and 13.80 seconds.

The caution on lap 300 put crew chief Pat Tryson and the team in a tough spot, knowing their move would dictate the actions of the competition.

“Pat was a sitting duck on that one,” said Mark after the race. “They all knew they couldn’t beat us straight up, so they were going to do the opposite of what we did. If we had pitted, they would have all stayed out and we would have been ninth, so it was a tough place to be in. We did the best we could do and we had a great car. We almost won the thing, but we just came up a little short in the end.

“That last caution just really put the hurt on us,” added Mark. “It was just a tough deal. We were just in a situation where I don't think Pat Tryson could win. Either thing he did, the rest of the guys were going do the opposite based on how our car ran.”

Mark moves up to fourth place, 81 points behind first and only nine points outside of third as the circuit heads to Phoenix next weekend, where the veteran has 13 top-10 finishes in 16 races. The finish was Mark’s ninth top-five and 14th top-10 finish of the season. It also marked Mark’s fourth second place run of 2004.

The finish capped off a busy weekend for Mark who finished fifth in Friday’s ASA race, sixth in Saturday’s Busch Series race and second on Sunday in the Nextel Cup race.