moment it was over. And it's hard to blame him.Mark failed to reach victory lane, recorded just three top-five finishes and his 12th-place finish in the standings was the worst since finishing 15th in 1988, his first year with Roush Racing.
"It was humiliating to me. I'm not used to racing for 25th place," Mark says. "I raced for 25th on a number of occasions and I had never done that before in my career, since I started racing when I was 15 years old.
"I drove my heart out, I was as committed as I could be and my team did everything it possibly could do, but there were teams out there that had their act together and they were able to get better results. Their cars were faster, their pit stops were faster and they were able to capitalize on that."
Mark, naturally, expects the tide to turn this season. Ben Leslie has replaced Jimmy Fennig as the team's crew chief, and Mark points out that the last time there was a major shakeup with his particular team he won seven races in 1998.
"It's a new look and a new thought process," Mark says.
"Sometimes you've got to look at things and say, 'I can't
keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.
Another thing is, if I need to be slapped in the head, I
will sure be sorely disappointed if Ben won't do that."On the good side of things, a lot of people around me have a lot of respect for me. The bad part of that is, I'm only as good as I am unless the people around me can help me. I intend to smack Ben around if he needs it. If I need it, I sure hope I receive that."
Mark knows he didn't encounter the best "racing luck" last
year, but says that's no excuse for running so poorly at a
number of events. If anything, the bad luck made the team
look even worse than it was, according to Mark."Our performance needed to be stepped up," he says. "We did everything that we could. It wasn't because we were lacking anything, it's because we weren't able to get the kind of results that we wanted and we were giving every effort that we could. We've taken the winter and realigned our strengths and weaknesses. We go out this year facing the competition and see how it stacks up."
If things go according to plan, this season won't be nearly as frustrating from Mark's perspective.
"There were times when it was pretty tough on me," he says.
"I don't race for the fun of it. I race to win. And most of
the time it was pretty evident that it was going to take a
pretty special set of circumstances to pull one off."The race tracks that we went to that we should have had a good shot at, something happened to us. ... Maybe we wouldn't have won, but we certainly had a much better opportunity to run good than the other places and those were just the places where something would go wrong for us."
