left knee Monday but should recover in time to race in The Winston
on May 19.The screw was inserted in July 1999 after Mark suffered a broken tibia plateau in an accident during practice for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
"I had been having pain in my knee since this winter," Mark said. "It really started bothering me during testing at Daytona in January. I had an X-ray done and Dr. Kollmer believed the screw was backing out of my knee. It didn't hurt all the time, but every so often I would just bend it and it hurt quite a bit. It even bruised my knee from the inside-out once."
Monday's procedure was performed in New Smyrna Beach, Florida by Dr. Chuck Kollmer, the same physician who operated on Mark 22 months ago.
"Hopefully, this will fix the problem," said Mark, who has just three top-10 finishes in 11 Winston Cup starts this year. "I figured I would have the screw removed now and give it a few months to heal. If there is still a problem, then I'll have more work done to it over the winter. Today's procedure was pretty simple. I just had a local anasthetic and was home before lunch."
Mark, 42, has 32 wins since joining the Winston Cup circuit in 1981. He has at least one victory in four straight years and 11 of the last 12, and in 1998 finished second behind Jeff Gordon for the Winston Cup championship.
