Speedway in preparation for the upcoming Coca-Cola 600 and The Winston;
both held at Lowe's. Mark will look to repeat as the defending champion
of the 600, while at the same time earn the one million dollar bounty
that goes to the winner of The Winston, NASCAR's Winston Cup a
ll-star event.Mark is excited about the opportunity to defend at the 600 and said that he is pleased with the results of last week's test in which the team tested a pair of cars to help determine which to run in in the longest race of the season.
"We had a pretty good test there last week," said Mark. "We started off kind of slow, but we got a whole lot faster as the session went on. By the second day we started to like what we were seeing on the track."
The session capped off a whirlwind tour for Mark and the No. 6 team who spent the entire previous week in California, testing at Sonoma and then racing in Fontana before heading to Charlotte for the two-day test session prior to last weekend's race at Richmond. All in all a busy week for the No. 6 team, but according to crew chief Ben Leslie it is the price of success.
"It makes for a long couple of weeks," said Leslie. "But you have to do everything that you can to get ahead on the track. The competition is so heavy these days that you just can't rest on what you have. You have to constantly search for new things that can get you around the track faster.
"We were happy with what we learned in both Sonoma and Charlotte and we look forward to going to both of those tracks. We won the 600 last year, so we want to come out and have another strong run. It's one of Mark's favorite tracks and we all look forward to racing there. Hopefully we can have a good showing at both The Winston and the 600 and maybe build some momentum heading into June."
Mark posted one of the most dramatic of his 33 Winston Cup victories last season at the Coca-Cola 600, slicing and dicing through lapped traffic late in the race to hold off teammate Matt Kenseth to win a race that has seen Roush Racing victorious in each of the last four years.
Mark won The Winston in 1998 and wouldn't mind another trip to victory lane in the all-star event of which he will be making his 14th start.
"The Winston is an awesome event," said Mark. "When you point race for 36 weeks like we do, it's kind of fun to just relax and have some fun, but that doesn't mean that we don't get after it. You never know what might happen in that race, especially with a million dollars on the line, but it's really just a great event."
Mark is currently 12th in the Winston Cup point standings, just 17 points outside of 10th place.
