about five events more than he made it onto the track last season, which
started as his "Salute to You" tour and his final Nextel Cup season.On Monday he called three series worth of add-ons to his 36-race Nextel Cup schedule in owner Jack Roush's No. 6 AAA Ford, plus three special events, "manageable."
Mark said he planned to compete in seven races each in the Busch and Craftsman Truck Series. The field for the four-race 2006 Crown Royal International Race of Champions will be announced Tuesday, and Mark is expected to defend his championship.
Mark said at numerous junctures last year that he could not imagine expending as much energy as he did in 2005 to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup and ultimately finish fourth in the championship.
"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 would mean an awful lot to me to have the same kind of performance on the racetrack this year, so therefore I'm willing to be miserable if need be in order to have that."
But Monday during a break in the final round of Preseason Thunder testing for the Nextel Cup Series at Daytona, Mark said he was warming up, slowly, to the challenge of this season.
"I've got so many things on my mind [and] there is a lot of stuff going on," Mark said. "I'm just gonna try to keep my head down and work real hard and make my team happy, make AAA happy and make some fans happy this year and work at it."
That effort took Mark to the limit last season, and the after-effects troubled him almost to the New Year.
A highlight came last weekend when he accompanied his teenage son, Matt, when the younger Mark won his first Sportsman division feature at the local New Smyrna Speedway, just south of Daytona Beach.
It led to Mark deciding virtually on the spot to move Matt into the Late Model class, which certainly won't lessen Mark's load.
"My month of December was the busiest I've had in my life," Mark said. "A lot of that is because of all the things that weren't able to happen, that I wasn't able to do the last three months of the season based on the focus and effort that went into the Chase, trying to catch up on that and get in the swing of some new sponsors.
"AAA [and] Coca-Cola, for example, were totally new to my program, so that took a little additional time and what have you and here we are. I'm doing a lot of stuff right now [and] I've got a lot on my mind."
Part of that is the utter helplessness and despair that Mark has felt about racing at Daytona since 1981.
"I don't have a lot of control about Daytona," Mark said. "This is not like California. Our California cars haven't been to the wind tunnel yet.
"Then we'll go to Vegas and test, and I'll be as fierce as I've ever been in my life about trying to win the next race -- but for Daytona I'm at the mercy of the engineers and the team and all those things.
"I don't really feel like I have a lot of input on the performance of the car, so I'm letting them do their work and staying out of it."
Mark admitted that misery had been his persona at many other times in his career, but for better or worse it resulted in excellence on the racetrack. He hopes it gives him the ultimate reward in 2006.
"My tendency is to go off on that misery side to try to make sure that we get that performance," Mark said. "I'm gonna fight that a little bit, but I'm not ready to address all that strategy just yet [because] I've got a lot of balls in the air.
"I'm really gonna make an effort this year to handle things the way I did last year with the philosophy I had, with the fans, with the media and with my team.
"I would really love the 2005 performance to be the last year of my Cup [career] -- so if I could do that well again in '06, it would be fantastic. If I could do better than that, obviously it would be a dream come true -- it would be incredible.
"If we could race for that championship and win, it would be the coolest thing. At the same time, realistically speaking, I know the odds that I'm up against and I can't believe that I was able to personally give the performance that I gave on the racetrack last year."
Still, the veteran said to expect the same effort this year.
"It would be hard for me to ask more of myself at this stage of my career, but you're not gonna get the Jack Roush philosophy recommendation from me, and that is, 'don't sweat it, don't strain so hard, just go do it and see if it turns out,'" he said. "Doggone it, that's a good strategy. I wish that would work for me, but I love what happened the last lap of Homestead. It's one of the few occasions where I've ever gotten beat that I had fun.
"Yeah, it would have been cool to win, but everybody was on their feet and that's why I race.
"If I could have times in 2006 and some races like that, it would really fill in that last box for me, because 2006 is the last Cup box for me, and I'd like to fill that in with great times like we had in 2005."
And the greatest checkmark, for Mark, would come if he could win the Daytona 500 in his last attempt Feb. 19. He knows the challenge well.
"It's Daytona," Mark said. "The first time I came down here was 1981. It's just a lot different as far as the preparation goes, and we only do it four times a year, [so] it's just different.
"I can help these guys make a car that will fly at the next place, but for here there are a lot of other forces out there that I don't have control of, and so it is what it is -- it's Daytona."
But even while he threw his hands up at the thought, Mark spoke from the heart.
"It's the biggest race of the year and I need to win it," Mark said. "This is my last chance, [so] I'm just gonna try to get in the front on the last lap and hog the track or something."
