When Mark finally decided to do something about his
fixation with stock-car racing, he loaded a beat-up ride and
countless dreams into an old bread truck and hit the Arkansas
highway.Some two decades later, that highway has taken him to the pinnacle of his trade.
Mark, whose 45 victories make him by far the most accomplished driver in NASCAR Busch Series history, will make his final series start Saturday in the Miami 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In doing so, he will leave behind a storybook legacy of dominance.
No one knows Mark's prowess in a 3,300-pound Ford Taurus better than his competitors, including 2000 series champion Jeff Green.
"Mark Mark is my hero," Green said. "I feel he his the best driver there is, regardless of what car he is driving, Winston Cup, Busch or IROC. I know he has made myself and my NesQuik Racing team better because he has made us strive to continually get better each week. You know when you've beaten him, you've done your job well.
"I have mixed feelings about him leaving the series because I feel he is the benchmark of what we strive to beat each week and I like having that to focus on. However, with him leaving, it is one less guy you've got to beat for the win, and every time he races, he's a factor for the win." That he is -- unyieldingly. In 199 career starts, Mark has notched 26 Bud Poles, 93 top-5s , 125 top-10s and, of course, the 45 victories. No one else is even close. Second place on the win list belongs to Jack Ingram, who tallied 31 trips to Victory Lane. Third on the chart is Tommy Houston, who won 24 times.
However, having now entered the twilight of his career with no championship to show for it, Mark feels it is time to focus his efforts solely on Roush Racing's No. 6 Ford NASCAR Winston Cup Series program.
"This is a real competitive business and it makes me feel good when we can be successful on the race track and I'm gonna miss that about Busch racing, but I just don't have time to do it anymore," Mark said. "I will be relieved when I get Miami done with, but at the same time I will miss the success that I've had and the way it makes me feel.
"It's been a very important part of my career and you never know, I never said I'd never drive a Busch car again. I probably won't race a Busch car if I'm racing a Winston Cup schedule, that's for sure. The demand is too great and it's just too much for me today. Five years ago it wasn't, it wasn't any big deal. But today with the demands that are on us, it's just hard to manage."
Mark began his NASCAR Busch Series career on Aug. 13, 1982 at Indianapolis Raceway Park, where he battled to a 26th-place finish. Eight starts later, he earned his first career Bud Pole at South Boston. Two starts after that, he was in Victory Lane for the first time at Dover.
This season, Mark has five wins in 12 starts. He's finished
outside the top-5 just once, and never outside the top-10. Still,
the negatives outweigh the positives. The time has come to
bequeath his equipment to Greg Biffle."I think that the sport has grown and there are so many more sponsors and so many more fans, heck, I mean, there is twice as much coverage of the sport, there are twice as many fans, there are more sponsors and the sponsors are having to pay more, so they're working their deal," Mark said. "To be honest with you, to race these cars takes more focus than it did five years ago.
"It's just harder. I don't know if it's because you've got these young boys in here that can really get the job done, or what it is, but you have to think about this stuff a lot and work on it and squeeze your guts all the time. You're just squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.
"You can be off (a little bit) and you run 18th instead of eighth. I mean, we ran at Martinsville and nothing went wrong and finished 18th. Nothing went wrong. We didn't have a flat tire or anything, we just finished 18th. If that would have been five years ago, that would have been eighth, so there's a lot of pressure."
He won't be pressured Saturday. He'll just jump in the No. 60 Winn-Dixie Ford and go about his business. He'll be a favorite to win, no question. In fact, he's expected to. That's the sole reason he's still in the car at all.
"I don't love to make laps and I don't love to drive a car fast. I love to beat everybody," Mark said. "That's what I love -- winning, beating everybody, sitting on the pole, breaking the track record, winning the race -- since I was 15 years old. That's why I race."
