world are in jeopardy of falling by the wayside, and the change could
begin as soon as Sunday.For years, it was taken for granted by most that the late Fireball Roberts was the greatest driver to never win a championship, and that when car owner Jack Roush finally won a Winston Cup title it would be with Mark, the driver of his No. 6 Ford.
Now another Roush driver, Matt Kenseth, is closing in on the team's first championship. He needs an average finish of just 30th in today's Pop Secret 400 at North Carolina Speedway and next week at Homestead to claim the team's first crown.
And Mark, in the twilight of his career, might end up taking Roberts' place as the best non-champion in NASCAR history. He has finished second or third in the standings eight times, including a runner-up run last year. But he's now 17th, far out of contention, and looking at as few as two seasons left to secure his first crown.
Rusty Wallace, the 1989 champion, said he's proud to see Roush finally getting a championship, but he'd rather it had been with Mark.
"I like all those Roush guys, but I hate for Mark to get to the end of his career and still hasn't won a championship," Wallace said. "He's been so close so many times. Matt's got a ton of time left. [Jeff] Burton's got lots of time left. But Mark's probably only going to do it one or two more years."
Wallace said that even if Mark's 33 career Cup wins and series record 45 Busch Series victories put him in the same league as the legendary Fireball Roberts, who won 33 Cup races in a career that lastest from 1950 to 1964, he considers it a disappointing distinction.
"I hope he doesn't get hung with that title," Wallace said. "I hope he wins [a championship]. He's a great individual and a fabulous driver."
Mark, 44, just shrugs when the subject of his championship struggles comes up.
" I've done about everything I can do about it," he said. "I don't know what else to do."
But Mark said being the best non-champion isn't a bad label at all.
"It means you've done awfully good," he said. "It just means that you didn't do everything there is to be done. I'm very proud of the things that I have accomplished, and I'm not devastated by the things I haven't accomplished."
Mark burst onto the NASCAR scene in 1981 as a 22-year-old ASA racer from Arkansas who came South with a couple of young crewmen to show the Winston Cup world a thing or two.
His debut as a driver/owner was remarkable. He qualified fifth for his first race, at North Wilkesboro, won the pole at Nashville in his third start, grabbed another pole at Richmond and finished third at Marksville -- all in just five races.
But he struggled so much in the next two years that he went back to the Midwestern short tracks of the ASA.
"I only knew how to make cars go fast," he said. "I didn't know how to make 3,700-pound cars stay on their tires for 500 miles. That took years of experience to get."
Mark won the ASA championship in 1986 and eventually returned to full-time NASCAR competition in 1988, when Roush formed his Cup team.
To see that organization, which he has been a part of since the start, closing in on its first championship is extremely satisfying for Mark. But he won't take any of the credit, even though he hand-picked Kenseth and is a part-owner of his car.
"I've been right a lot in my years, been wrong a lot, too," he said. "But don't get me wrong, I was right about Matt Kenseth."
Even though he's still highly competitive on the track, Mark doesn't seem distressed that his driving career is coming to a close. He'll likely run the full schedule another season or two, then possibly follow that with a limited number of races.
"It has been my life 24/7 since 1974," he said. "I'm looking forward to a day when there's something else in my life besides these race cars."
The first thing on his retirement to-do list is building some friendships.
"I don't have any friends, because I don't have any time for friends other than my crew chief and the guys I work with," he said. "There are a lot of things in life that I passed on and gave up to be as successful as I've been with my limited amount of talent."
