dreaming about for his entire racing career. Finally, after so many
heartbreaking disappointments, Roush Racing had won a Winston Cup
championship.It was happening at North Carolina Speedway, the track where in 1989 Mark had earned his first Winston Cup victory as a driver and Jack Roush's first Cup victory as a car owner. What could be more fitting?
Yet something was out of kilter. Mark was there, all right, but somebody else was holding up the oversized trophy and accepting the congratulations.
There was no sweat and grime from a hard-earned title-clinching performance to be wiped from his face before smiling for the cameras. Mark wasn't even in a driver's uniform.
Matt Kenseth was the star of this show. The 31-year-old driver who Mark had recruited and urged Roush to hire had wrapped up the 2003 title with a fourth-place finish in the Pop Secret 400.
Mark, meanwhile, had lost an engine after running only 239 laps. Despite the fact that Mark is listed as a co-owner of Kenseth's team, nobody could have blamed him if he had gone on up the highway and left the celebrating to Kenseth, crew chief Robbie Reiser, Roush and the rest of the newly crowned championship team.
But that's not Mark. He changed into his street clothes and came over to Kenseth's pit to stand and watch the final laps. He posed for pictures with Kenseth, Roush and the trophy and came to the press box for the interviews that followed.
Through it all, Mark must have felt like an actor watching someone win an Academy Award for a film about that actor playing his most memorable role.
Or something like that.
"I don't know how I feel," said Mark, who finished just 38 points behind Tony Stewart in last year's final standings, the fourth time in his career he's been the runner-up in the title chase without winning.
"I don't really have a feeling because I don't feel like I deserve to be a part of this thing," Mark said. "The only reason I am a partner in the 17 car is because it was a gift to me from Jack Roush. Matt Kenseth and Robbie Reiser have earned this, and even though I cared an awful lot and tried to help as much as I could, my contribution to this team doesn't add up to anything in my opinion."
Kenseth begged to differ. The Wisconsin native met Mark at a drivers' meeting before a Busch Series race at Talladega in 1997, Kenseth's second race as a driver for Reiser's team. That turned out to be a momentous encounter for Kenseth's career.
"I guess he heard of me from racing in Wisconsin," Kenseth said. "We drove for the same owners at different times and at a lot of the same race tracks.
He called me the next week and said he wanted to help me. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but he wanted to get me hooked up with Jack."
Even before Kenseth got his first Busch Series win at Rockingham in early 1998, he had a contract with Roush. He did some testing and accompanied Mark and his crew chief at the time, Jimmy Fennig, to tests where he didn't even drive.
"I just tagged along a lot and tried to absorb and learn as much as I could," Kenseth said.
As Kenseth moved up into Winston Cup, Mark has been a mentor. Kenseth said the veteran has taught him many things about being a race car driver, and the student has learned his lessons well.
Roush came to Winston Cup racing as a car owner in 1988 and, for the first four years, Mark was his only driver. In their third season, Mark lost the championship to Dale Earnhardt by just 26 points after Mark had lost more points than that to a penalty early in the season that Roush has always deeply resented.
Mark's team was penalized last year, too, for another technical infraction in the fall Rockingham race that Roush protested strongly. Though Stewart's final margin was eventually larger than the penalty Mark had incurred, Roush still fumes about that, too.
Sunday afternoon, though, Roush tried his best to put that aside and enjoy the moment. He now has his Winston Cup championship as a car owner.
Mark, however, still doesn't have one as a driver. He'll turn 45 in January. Bobby Allison won a championship at that same age in 1983, becoming the oldest driver to win the title. He's 17th in the current standings, though, which means he'll most likely have his worst finish in the standings during his tenure with Roush - he was 15th in that first year in 1988.
"I am not bitter about the things I haven't accomplished in my life or in my career," Mark said. "I am very proud of the things I have accomplished.
There's no bittersweet here.
"What I've done and accomplished, I'm proud of. What Matt has done and accomplished, I'm very proud of as well. But I'm not more proud of Matt today than I was a year ago. The actions make the man, the trophy doesn't."
