The 2004 Food City 500

"We just didn’t have a good day,” said Mark leads the way

Mark after Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. “Things just didn’t go our way and we did a lot of things wrong.”

The No. 6 Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) Racing Team was just never able to get a firm grasp of the car over the weekend, qualifying 21st on Friday, despite having one of the fastest cars in practice on Friday. In the end track position and a ‘tight’ handling car would put an early end to Mark’s bid for a third victory at Bristol. In the end Mark had his hands full just securing the finish, after engine problems struck his car late.

Mark never dropped below 25th place during the race, but he never ran any better than 18th either. The location of the team’s pit would also hurt the team’s effort as Mark – despite a solid effort on the pit stops – struggled getting on and off pit road all day.

The car started off the race ‘tight’. By lap 139 Mark felt the leaders bearing down on his bumper. However he was able to hold the leaders at bay, racing his way through lapped traffic to stay on the lead lap. Running in 19th place on lap 362 the team came in for its fifth stop of the day and the day’s only green flag stop. The day’s sixth caution was called a few moments later on lap 380, and Mark was caught a lap down.

The team gambled by not pitting after the day’s ninth caution was called on lap 462. Mark started the run the first car one lap down in hopes that he could get around the leader, thus gaining his lap back. However the plan backfired, as the cars behind him all took fresh tires. On the new tires, he was quickly passed and the No. 6 Ford had fallen to 23rd place by lap 482 when the day’s 10th caution was issued. Smoke started to come from Mark’s car during that time and Mark radioed that he was having trouble with the engine.

The field was red-flagged with just five laps to go and Mark was able to hang on to the 23rd spot. Despite the off-weekend, Mark was still able to avoid trouble and post his best finish at Bristol since March of 2002. Kurt Busch, Mark’s teammate, went on to win the race.

“We should have qualified better,” said Mark. “We should have had better track position and we should have run better, but then we broke our engine late anyway. We were pretty lucky to finish as well as we did considering we started having problems with 20 laps to go. So I guess in that way we were actually fortunate today.

“Still, we have to do better,” added Mark. “We have a great team and we just have to rebound and move forward going into to Texas. It’s a long season and we’ll just have to put this one behind us and move forward.”

After six races, Mark is 15th in the Nextel Cup points race, only 50 points outside of 10th place.