The 2005 Bass Pro Shop/MBNA 500

Mark and the Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) Racing Team racked up their fourth top-five finish of the Nextel Cup Chase for the Mark Atlanta October 2005

Championship, running to a third-place finish in Sunday’s Bass Pro Shops 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Mark boasted one of the strongest cars in the field running inside the top-five for virtually the entire race and overcoming an early pit road speeding penalty to post the third place finish.

“If I had cars like that every week, man, I think I could drive until I was 60,” said Mark after the race. “A couple of them just plain outran us, but we really put a whooping on a lot of them today. Who said I was a pessimist. I knew we were good on Friday and I knew we'd have a shot. It seemed to come and go for everybody today. We weren't quite good enough to pull it off at the end, but it was a great run for this Viagra® Team and I'm proud of it."

Mark, who clinched his record fifth International Race of Champions Championship on Saturday, started the race fourth after a strong qualifying session on Friday night. He needed only 19 laps to take the lead from teammate Carl Edwards and he would hold the lead until lap 51 when NASCAR handed it over to Dale Earnhardt Jr. after penalizing Mark for speeding on pit road after the team’s second stop of the day. Mark beat all others off of pit road, but was forced to go to the tail end of the longest line and restart in 26th position when the field went green on lap 54.

Mark was all the way back up to 15 th place when the race’s third caution was issued just 10 laps later on lap 64. Mark came into the pits again for four tires and fuel. The team posted one of many impressive stops on the day and Mark returned to the field in 11 th place when green flag racing resumed on lap 69. He needed only one lap to break back inside the top 10 where he would run for the remainder of the race.

Although his strategy was to ‘take it easy’ on the tires, Mark broke back Mark & Sadler Atlanta October 2005

inside the top five on lap 98 and he would run there for all but five of the remaining 227 laps. In one of their best outings ever, the Viagra® Racing Team’s over-the-wall crew would posts stops of 12.8, 12.9, 13.3, 12.6 and 12.79 seconds to keep Mark in the front of the field.

A 12.6-second stop under caution on the team’s eighth stop on lap 227 drew praise from team owner Jack Roush, who radioed the team that ‘you guy’s are doing it today,” and sent Mark back out in first place when the field went green on lap 232. Mark was able to hold on to the lead for the next 10 laps, before losing it to Edwards who would end up with the field’s fastest car and the victory on the day.

With the car starting to get ‘loose’ Mark fell back to fourth on lap 280, but rebounded to pass the No. 8 car of Earnhardt Jr. on lap 315 to move back into fourth place. He spent the last 10 laps of the race attempting to run down second place Jeff Gordon, but ran out of time and would have to settle for the third place run. The finish moved Mark to within 143 points of first place Tony Stewart and 100 points of second place. He is currently only 34 points outside of third place with only three races remaining in the 2005 season.

The team returns to action next week at Texas Motor Speedway, where Mark boasts one win, three top-five and four top-10 finishes on nine Cup races.