The 2006 Dodge Charger 500

Mark and the No. 6 AAA Race team ran to their sixth top-10 finish of the season with an eighth place run in the Dodge Darlington - May 2006

Charger 500 at Darlington Raceway. The run marked the team’s 10th top-15 finish in 11 races in 2006. With the finish Mark remains in fourth-place in the Nextel Cup point standings.

“That’s what we needed,” said Mark. “We always had a good car on the long run. We’d lose quite a bit of ground but then our car would be awesome and we would gain ground on the leader the second half of a run. We got a green flag at the end and that’s what we needed to do the best we could. We lost a lot of ground many times in the race and we made a lot back up. It was a great effort by the AAA team.

“I was saying before, I don’t know if I should be frustrated because we’re not finishing as good as we run or happy that we’re running good knowing that we’re going start finishing like we run. Either way, this is better than the last few weeks.”

Mark started the race 17th and needed only 50 laps to break into the field’s top 10. He moved all the way to ninth by the time the night’s second caution was issued on lap 68. The team came into the pits for four tires, fuel and an air pressure adjustment and fell back to 11th place after a 15.602-second stop. Mark moved back inside the top-10 on lap 75, just three laps after the field returned to green. He moved into ninth place on lap 91, where he was running when caution was called on lap 94.The team again came into the pits, this time for four tires, fuel and a wedge adjustment, redeeming itself with a 13.7-second stop that advanced Mark to eighth when the field returned to green on lap 99.

Mark remained in ninth for the next several laps, before radioing the crew that he had worn his right-rear tire out. He dropped back to 11th by the time caution was called on lap 149. The rear-tire changer lost his footing on the stop, causing a 16-second stop and the team fell back to 14th when green flag racing resumed on lap 153. Mark again began a patient movement forward, breaking back into the top 10 on lap 207. Mark was still running in 10th position when the night’s sixth caution was issued on lap 247, and the team came down pit road for the sixth time of the race, taking four tires, fuel and making another wedge adjustment. The team turned in a 13.43-second stop, and returned to the track in 12th place when the field went green on lap 253.

Mark again moved back inside the top 10 on lap 273, where he would run the remainder of the race, taking ninth place on lap 283, before settling into eighth on lap 312. The team would pit for the final time of the evening under green on lap 316 and he was still running in eighth when the field cycled through on lap 321. He would be able to hang onto the position for the remainder of the race, bringing home the eighth-place finish.

“Every race we run better than we finish,” added Mark. “I don’t know if that’s frustrating or if that’s a good thing. I don’t know. We’ve been running good, but we’re not finishing as good as we run so if we can fix that and not lose the other, we should be pretty stout.” Mark and the AAA Team will return to action next Saturday night as they head into the Nextel All-Star Challenge as defending champions of the all-star event.