Inside his race car, Mark's age hasn't shown itself. Not as anything
negative, anyway. The older Mark may actually be a better Mark, quite an
accomplishment considering he was awfully good as a young man."We all get a little wiser with age. I think he's gotten better," said Ben Leslie, the crew chief of the Jack Roush Racing team that prepares Mark's Fords.
"He's gotten a little more patience, but he hasn't lost his intensity. That's a tradeoff a lot of veterans make. Mark is still extremely intense. With him, it's all about the trophy. It's not about the money, not about saying 'I'm better than you.' It's about the trophy. Mark is a real racer."
A quiet man, Mark is quietly putting together an excellent season on NASCAR's Winston Cup circuit. He's well positioned to annex one of the few trophies he hasn't been able to win - the one that symbolizes the Winston Cup points championship.
Mark has had flashier seasons in terms of victories. He's won only once this year. But he's finished 13 of 19 races in the top 10. He's second in points to Sterling Marlin, 106 points in arrears.
The championship, he insists, is not a consuming thought.
"I'm not worried about it," he said. "I didn't say I didn't want to win it. I don't lie awake at night and worry about it. I've had a better career than most. I've done things I'm very proud of. I'm very grateful for that."
Mark has 33 career Winston Cup victories, which ranks him 17th all time. He's won 45 times on the Busch circuit, more than anyone. His career earnings of $32,670,081 are fourth best.
But he hasn't won a championship.
He's come close.
In 1990, he was runner-up to Dale Earnhardt by 26 points. In February of that year, his team was docked 46 points (and $40,000) after winning a race in Richmond for a carburetor spacer plate that was too thick. Without that, he would have been champion.
In 1998, Mark had one of the best seasons any driver has ever had. He won seven times, was second six times and third four times. He was in the top five in 22 of 33 races. That was the year Jeff Gordon won 13 times and had 26 finishes in the top five. Gordon won the points title by 364 points over runner-up Mark.
Mark was also runner-up, in 1994, to Earnhardt.
"I do the best I can. Did then, do now," Mark said. Recent history is not on his side. Since 1993, every driver that led the points chase at the season's midpoint has gone on to win. But much bigger deficits have been overcome much later than midway. In 1992, Alan Kulwicki trailed Bill Elliott by 278 points with six races left. Kulwicki, who died in a plane crash the following year, won the championship by 10 points.
Mark is at one of his best tracks today. He has 23 finishes in the top 10
in 31 career races at Pocono, including 13 times in his past 14 visits.
Mark was runner-up to Dale Jarrett here last month."We lost a little ground last week [in the points race]," Mark said. "Hopefully we can gain some this weekend. I've always enjoyed racing at Pocono. It has long straightaways and you have to really drive in the corners, so it's my kind of racing."
Overall, Mark said, he doesn't enjoy being a race driver as much as he did before. Driving is one thing. The things that come with it are another.
"It's just not as much fun as it used to be," Mark said. "There's so many more aspects to it than there used to be, it's so much more consuming.
"But it's always more fun when you're surprising yourself, doing better than you thought you could do. Expectations have a way of being a killjoy."
A championship may not qualify as a surprise. It would qualify as a nice - and some would say well-deserved - addition to an already crowded trophy case. Of the 16 drivers with more career victories than Mark, 15 have at least one championship. So have eight who don't have as many victories as Mark.
"We all really want to win it," crew chief Leslie said. "We're doing everything we possibly can. It would be huge."
