Mark is 44 years old and has been driving NASCAR Winston Cup cars since
1981, including the last 15 with car owner Jack Roush. His career has been
stellar, as he's won 33 races, 41 poles and finished second in the points
standings four times. In the modern era, no one has more second-place
finishes.In this age of technology and engineering, the veteran Mark has been able to keep up with the younger crowd. Heck, he's outrun them, too. Last year's runner-up finish to Tony Stewart was a testament to Mark's tenacity and commitment to his career.
His driving days are far from over.
"I've started over twice in the last six years," Mark said. "Both times, out of the box, were fantastic. But I don't expect that to happen every time. I'm not going to stand around with tears in my eyes wishing I could do this stuff.
"I have done this stuff. I love winning races. It's been really good to me, and I plan to continue to do it. I have some unfinished business, I have a terrific race team, and I've got more years of my time than a lot of the guys in the garage. It's not time to be worrying about 2006 yet."
No, Mark's focus isn't on the future, isn't on sponsorships, isn't on car owners. It's on here and now and what it takes to win. Mark has been with Jack Roush since 1988, and there's no reason to change that.
"I have a real comfortable relationship with Jack," Mark said. "As long as I want to race, Jack will break his back to make that happen, whatever it might be. And he's made the same kind of commitment to help me with (son) Matt. Jack and I are partners in life, as well as an in racing. We're real comfortable with where we're at right now, with the race team, with Pfizer and Viagra. We're just working on taking care of that unfinished business."
Mark didn't say what his unfinished business is, but he hasn't won a Winston Cup championship yet. Nor has he won the Daytona 500.
And he hasn't won in 2003, either. Coming off the near-championship run of last season, Mark stands 15th in the points standings. That's obviously now where he wants to be.
"We've been more competitive on the racetrack so far this year than we were last year," Mark said. "Golly, in 50 percent of the races, we've been wrecked or blown up. I couldn't help the wrecks, and I couldn't help the parts breaking. And neither could my guys. Those are things that for the most part we can't control, and we have to roll with the flow.
"If nothing, nothing, went wrong the whole rest of the year, we'd probably
win the championship by 500 points. But we're not done having trouble. We
would be very happy if the huge majority of it is behind us."But that's not realistic either, Mark said.
"I believe that, for me, I had an average year on luck last year," Mark said. "Average. Or probably better than average for me and average for everyone else. I think I'm paying for that this year so far. We'll just see how things play out."
Mark's team took advantage of last weekend's time off to catch up on cars and to prepare for some upcoming test sessions. Mark tested at the Infineon Raceway road course this week and will test at Lowe's Motor Speedway after he gets back from racing at California Speedway.
"It's very important to all of us, but especially to the guys who work on these cars," Mark said of the time off. "We're getting in position to test two weeks in a row. ... It's kind of hard to do that if we were racing (last) weekend as well. It puts us in a position to just do more. Nobody gets a chance to lay down and rest. We just do more."
That's the way Winston Cup racing is. You hardly have the time to look back, and if you do, you might get passed. That's the way Mark has approached his career. Always look forward. The most important race is the next one. That means the most important race is this weekend's Auto Club 500 at California Speedway.
Mark won there in 1998 and has two other top-10 finishes on the 2-mile track. But he also has three DNFs, including the inaugural race there in 1997 when he ran out of gas but still ended up 10th.
That's a little bit like his 2003 season. He runs well, but something happens to keep him from finishing better.
No worries. There's always next week.
"We've got a great race team, we've done really well," Mark said. "We ran so good at several races this year, better than we did last year. If we can keep doing that, everything will be all right."
