vowing to continue the fun-loving approach that served him so well last
year.Mark is back for an encore season in Roush Racing's No. 6 Ford after his retirement plans were put off a year when Kurt Busch's sudden departure to Penske Racing left a vacancy.
Before the start of the second week of NASCAR testing at Daytona International Speedway, he smiled broadly, laughed loudly and seemed quite at ease and optimistic about the upcoming season.
It was a remarkably different approach than he used for much of his career, when he appeared to be miserable despite his successes — 35 wins in Nextel Cup and a series-leading 47 in Busch.
"I tell you what, I had fun last year, which was really cool," Mark said. "It was the best year of my life professionally and personally, so I just want everybody to make sure that they know that they're talking to a guy that had a blast last year."
It helped that he ran so well. He won the Nextel All-Star Challenge at Charlotte and a points race at Kansas and had 12 top-five and 19 top-10s in the Cup Series. He comfortably made the cut for the Chase for the Nextel Cup and finished fourth in points. In just eight Busch Series starts, he won twice, and he won two IROC races en route to that circuit's season championship.
He said those results mean so much to him that he might allow himself to lapse back into his old ways if he thought he would achieve similar results.
"I'm willing to be miserable if need be in order to have that," he said. "My tendency is to go off on that misery side to try to make sure that we get that performance."
But, he said, "I'm going to fight that a little bit."
He said car owner Jack Roush has laid out a plan that calls for Mark to just enjoy himself in his final Cup season, which will be followed by a full-time gig in the Craftsman Truck Series.
"Jack has a strategy that says, 'Don't worry about it. ... Just go have fun with it this year. The pressure is off, and you might do better than you ever have,' " Mark said. "Boy, that sounds real good to me, but we all know that I'm going to fall over that misery edge as soon as I get close enough to it that I can jump over it."
Roush said his strategy for Mark shouldn't be construed as direct orders.
"I wouldn't presume to give Mark instructions on anything," Roush said. "But I encouraged him to have fun and not lose any sleep over what we're trying to do and see if it might come to him a little easier if he just relaxed."
Roush also said that while Mark appeared to be enjoying himself maintaining his positive approach throughout the 2005 season, there were times when he was under considerable stress, particularly toward the end of the season.
"As we got into the Chase and had to do all the tests, and he thought about how hard it was to face these race tracks for the last time and thought about what he was going to remember about the race track — the times he won or the times it didn't go so good — there was some anxiety there," Roush said.
"I was just trying to tell him not to be anxious about it, but that was just advice. It certainly wasn't telling him what to do."
Mark said he just can't totally buy into Roush's "take it easy and see how it turns out" advice.
"Doggone it, that's a good strategy," Mark said. "I wish that would work for me."
But no matter how this season turns out or regardless of how his truck racing career goes, he's undoubtedly upbeat about the future, particularly where it involves his driving.
"That's what I live for," he said. "If something were to work out that I wasn't in that truck, you'd catch me at the Saturday night short tracks across the country.
"I am not done racing by any means."
