Mark and the No. 6 AAA Race Team ran to a
13th-place finish in Sunday’s Dodge Save/Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.
The team battled a slow car for virtually the entire weekend at the 1.99-mile
road course, but was able to qualify eighth on Friday and bring home the
top-15 finish. The finish moved Mark up one space to fourth in the Nextel
Cup point standing, 321 points behind first and only eighth points out
of third.
“That was probably one of the worst road course cars that we’ve ever had,”
said Mark. “We came a long way with it and the team was able to make it
better, but it was just never fast enough. Still, we hung in there and the
AAA Team never gave up and kept fighting and we got a solid finish out of
it and we were really able to dodge a bullet.
Mark struggled with the car’s handling and speed during Friday’s practice
session, but he was still able to turn a fast lap during the qualifying
session and started the race eighth. He moved up to sixth early on and ran
inside the top 10 for the first 68 laps of the 110 lap event. Mark had put
his No. 6 Fusion in eighth when the team came down pit road for the second
time of the day, under green, on lap 68. The AAA crew fired off a 13.8-second
stop and Mark went back out in 18th place, as different cars were on various
pit cycles.
He moved back inside the top-15 on lap 76, where he would run for the
remainder of the race. Mark drove his way to 12th place on lap 83, but
several late cautions would hurt the team’s chances of a top 10 finish, as
it would allow several teams on different cycles to stay out on fuel and
maintain their track positions.
“We said going in that we had a 20 to 25th place car,” said Mark. “And I said
that if we could get a top 15 out of it that I would be ecstatic and we were
able to do better than that and we’ll take that and move on to next week and
Daytona. It was a decent points day and we were able to survive on a day
where our car was just a little off. Pat Tryson and the team did a great job
and I’m proud of them for the effort.”
The finish was Mark’s 13th top-15 in 16 races this season. The team will
return to action next week at Daytona International Speedway in Saturday
night’s Pepsi 400.
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