Brickyard 400
Indianapolis Raceway
Speedway, IA
August 8, 1999

Car 6 at Brickyard

The left side of Mark's car was patched up after he and Rusty Wallace collided on pit road during a practice run on Thursday, August 5.

Mark and Gordon lead the field

Mark and Jeff Gordon, who finished first and second, respectively, in the 1998 Brickyard 400, lead the field to the start/finish line for the 1999 edition of the race.

NASCAR Line

Mark and Rusty Wallace were playing catch-up before the final practice even started for the Brickyard 400. Mark and Wallace were involved in a pit road accident during practice Aug 5. The two collided near turn one when a NASCAR official allowed cars leaving the apron in turn one to blend with cars exiting pit road.
Mark bunched on the inside "I don't know what happened," Wallace crew chief Robin Pemberton said. "There's supposed to be a guy out there, but apparently the sun got in his eyes or there was some obstruction up there." It wasn't my fault and it wasn't Mark's fault," Wallace said. "If anything, you could maybe put the blame on the stop-and-go guys." The incident forced Mark's crew to replace half the sheet metal on the left side of his car while Wallace's team had to change the suspension, the steering components and replace the front fender and corner of Wallace's machine. Mark and Rusty both missed most of the practice session that followed first-round qualifying. But by race time, they were both among the top contenders. Mark led 16 laps and finished fourth while Wallace wound up eighth. "We had the car to beat there early on, but the handle got away from us a little bit later on," Mark said. We were a little faster than the 18(Bobby LaBonte) and not as fast as the 24(Jeff Gordon) or the 88(Dale Jarrett) so we'll take fouth."


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