ark and Jack Roush are older and wiser. They have been through these tight
points races before. They have come oh-so-close to winning stock-car racing's
most prestigious title and fallen short twice in the past 10 years. They have
torn their hearts out wondered why fate had dealt such cruel blows.But not this year. This year, each of them believes he has more important things in life to worry about. With six races left in the 2002 campaign, Mark's No. 6 Ford team is second in the standings, trailing rookie Jimmie Johnson by just 11 points. But, trophy or no trophy, this will be a great season. That's their story and they're sticking to it.
"When it comes to competition and getting your heart broken, I'm an eternal pessimist," Mark said. "This business has dealt me some very cruel and heartbreaking blows and it's not going to this year, because it just won't. I'm prepared for whatever happens. I'm so proud of this team and we're going to bust our butt to win this championship, but if we didn't run another race this year, we've already done more than we probably hoped to accomplish this year."
Mark, who took the lead in the points race three weeks ago, lost it after early-race engine troubles relegated him to a 25th-place finish last weekend at Kansas Speedway. Still, he's in the hunt.
Just like 1997, which was the last time Mark led the standings with 10 races or less left. He held a 13-point lead over Jeff Gordon with 10 events remaining. In what ended up being the closest three-way battle in history, Gordon won his second title by 14 points over second-place Dale Jarrett and 29 points over third-place Mark.
For Mark, it was a painful loss since he had won seven races. Who would've thought some kid from California would put together a season with 13 victories? Who would have thought Mark, who has paid his dues in Winston Cup since 1982, wouldn't finally win the title that continues to elude him? But as hurtful as '97 was, it hardly compared to the gut-wrenching finish of 1990.
That year marked the latest Mark has ever held the top spot in a points race, when he led the late Dale Earnhardt by 45 points with just two events remaining. Earnhardt went on to win at Phoenix and take a six-point lead into the final race in Atlanta, where he finished third. Mark's sixth-place effort that day meant a runner-up spot in the standings by 26 points. To understand just how cruel that points race was requires a bit of a history lesson. Mark and his Roush-owned team were penalized after a race at Richmond International Raceway that cost him 46 points.
"The reason we didn't win the championship in 1990 is that NASCAR made a call
between a rule that was a supplemental rule and was written after the rule book
was published," Roush said. "Bill France made the decision that they had a
disparity between the rule book and what the supplemental rule was and that
he would discount the supplemental rule in favor of (team owner) Richard Childress
and Dale Earnhardt, and that we would pay the price."That's the reason we didn't win that championship. We weren't the dominant car late in the season, but the 46 points they took away from us back at Richmond in that year was the reason we didn't win. I don't think at that time he had any idea it was going to come down to those 46 points determining the championship, but that's the way it was."
Burned twice before, both Mark and Roush say they won't invest enough hope into the prospect of winning this year's title to get burned a third time. Veteran Mark is yet again battling down the stretch for his first ever Winston Cup championship.
Mark was first to let the public now about this. Not five minutes after a 16th-place finish at Dover, Del., put him atop the standings, Mark said he wasn't going to talk about it.
"I won't. I won't," he said. "I'm not going to be any fun to cover, I promise, because I'm not going to say nothing until it's over. Believe me, I won't talk about it. You guys are going to pull your hair out if I stay in this shape."
That day, Mark went as far as to say he didn't need the lead in the title race.
"The points lead doesn't mean anything right now," Mark said. "If I hadn't had a flat tire, I'd have a bigger points lead and if I would have wrecked, I wouldn't have the points lead. So, really, it doesn't mean anything. There's nine races to go."
Part of this is because Mark and Roush have been burned so many times. But part of it is because these two men have experienced things that have readjusted their priorities.
Earlier this year, the last time the Series visited Talladega, Ala., in fact, Roush crashed an airplane he was flying on his 60th birthday and almost died. By a massive stroke of luck, Roush crashed into a lake, but was saved by an ex-Marine, Larry Hicks, who had extensive training in search-and-rescue.
Compared to the gift that is his very next breath, a championship just doesn't sound as important, Roush said.
"I'm certainly lucky to be alive still and the most recent encounter I had with near death was Larry Hicks," Roush said. "The thing about an accident is that if you miss an accident by just an inch, it never happens. Sometimes the accident that could do you in, you don't even know about. But I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky to have lived to be 60 years old.
"I've had a full life and it will not be substantially fuller if I live to be 65 and win the championship or if I live to be 65 and don't. I've experienced many wonderful things. I've had a great opportunity to work with a lot of fascinating and inspiring people and have had more economic and more fundamental success at competitive things I've been involved with than I could have ever imagined as a young man."
Mark, too, has made his world outside of racing a more important part of his life -- helping him keep this year's title chase in perspective. Mark admits to having spent so much time trying to get to Winston Cup and then trying to win the title that he did not get a lot of time to spend with his only son, Matt.
Matt is 10 now and the two have bonded as Matt pursues a racing career of his own. Compared to the time he gets to spend with his kid, now, a title just isn't that important to Mark, either.
"I don't think this is where Mark's heart was," Roush said. "He was enjoying the bright spot in his life, which was the experience he was having with Matt and bringing him along. Rather than dwell on all the things that were making him crazy (like racing struggles), he chose to be on the positive side with a lot of the discussions he had with the media and talked about Matt's program and how excited he was with that. He was a late-life father and Matt is his only son and that's a real big part of his motivation."
All of this said, the two are giving this -- perhaps the best shot they'll have for the rest of their careers -- all they've got. After all, the title has fallen a couple notches on the two's priority lists, but that still leaves it pretty high. And both understand how fortunate they are to have another crack at winning what would be either's first Cup title.
"I didn't know for sure if I would ever see the day when we could be in this position," Mark said. "You only get so many chances at this and I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of chances, so I consider myself lucky."
"I think that based on his experience and the frustrations he's had in the past that he's not counting on it, but he's certainly not counting it out and he's not going take himself out of the picture," Roush added. "He is going to take care of business and minimize his risks and wait and see what happens."
As the two chase this title, they're going to be careful with exposing their hearts to the prospect of getting burned once more. Mark believes this approach might actually help his chances of winning.
“I won't (talk about the title chase). I won't. I'm not going to be any fun to cover, I promise, because I'm not going to say nothing until it's over. Believe me, I won't talk about it. You guys are going to pull your hair out if I stay in this shape. ”
"I'm not going to do it. As bad as it goes, I'm not going to freak out and our team isn't," Mark said. "We're going to do every race as smart as we can and accept that a bad day is a bad day and accept that we may lose the lead and accept we may lose second and third or whatever it may be.
"You can't strain real hard and stop it from happening. When the air comes out of a tire, it comes out. No matter how hard you strain, the air still comes out and you can't do anything about that. What you can do, the things you can control, you have to do the very best job you can and the things you can't control, you just have to let go."
Roush is still a bit concerned about something he cannot control. It's something he couldn't control 12 years ago, and it's something that he's still not completely over.
Just a few races ago, NASCAR made an adjustment to the air dams of the Chevrolets and Pontiacs which were intended to make the two makes more competitive. Johnson, who leads the points battle, drives a Chevy. Tony Stewart, who trails Mark in third, drives a Pontiac. Gordon, who is fourth, drives a Chevy. If the adjustment gives these two makes enough of an advantage, Roush will not hesitate to point to another rule change as the cause of his missing out on another close points race.
"This driver championship thing is affected by things that happen beyond your control as a team and as a driver," he said. "NASCAR keeps their fingers in it throughout the year. They've just given the Chevrolet and Pontiac an advantage for the balance of 2002, and I don't think that was good judgment on their part to dabble in it this late. There ought to be a cutoff point ... where they can't mess with it anymore."
Mark doesn't want to pay any attention to that stuff, though. He won't allow himself to get worked up about it, because he doesn't want to allow himself to get worked up about the championship. That, you see, exposes his heart. And he doesn't believe his heart can take another hit like '90 and '97.
Jarrett believes it's Mark's heart, though, that will help him be a leading contender from now until the season finale in Homestead, Fla.
"Mark is a tremendous race driver," Jarrett said. "This is what he does and he'll be the first to tell you that he doesn't do a lot of things. This is his business; this is his life and that's what he's made it. It's been that way probably for as long as I can remember when I saw him come along and he was just a kid then.
"He's the ultimate competitor. I don't know that there's anybody else out there that can do a lot of the things he can do with a race car, so it's just that competitive fire and spirit inside him that makes him good and that's going to make him be tough to beat down the stretch."
