The 2004 MBNA 400 - Salute To Heros

"It was either get it done or lose, and I didn’t want to lose,” said Mark Mark leading Jr.at Dover

moments after ‘getting it done’ at Dover International Speedway, running to his 34th career Nextel Cup victory. With 10 laps to go, Mark turned some of his fastest laps of the race to pull away from second place Tony Stewart and move on to his fourth career win at Dover.

“All I could do was stand up in the seat and do it,” added Mark. “I can’t say enough about this race team, starting with crew chief Pat Tryson. This win means a lot to me. I’ve dedicated my whole life to racing and winning is why I race. We’ve also had our share of heartbreak this year and this feels really good.

“We had a car last week (the same car) that was just as good and we had our hearts broken with both ignition boxes going out. The guys just said, ‘hey, we’ll just have to go win Dover’, and they did it and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to all of them, Pat, Wally (Brown, team engineer), Todd (Zeigler, car chief) and the whole Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) team. That’s like a fairly tail and it just doesn’t usually happen that way.

“This is a real team effort and a real team win,” added Mark. “Everybody at Roush Racing has put an awful lot into all these race teams and it feels good to see the No. 6 car get back to where we can run up front. It's the team. It's these guys. They're doing the work.”

The No. 6 Viagra Team put the heartbreak of last week behind them and turned its focus to Dover, where Mark was strong all weekend. The No. 6 Ford posted some of the fastest times both practice sessions and qualified seventh on Friday.

The race would turn out to be one of the wildest in recent memory, featuring seven cautions, including the ‘big one’ late that claimed 19 cars in its carnage. In the end, the day would see nearly three hours of yellow and red flag action, but one of the only constants of the day was Mark and the No. 6 Viagra Ford. Mark ran consistently inside the top 10, and the crew made no major changes to the car the entire day. Mark and Tryson masterfully worked to place themselves in position for the late run at the victory.

The car was slightly tight early on and Mark fell back to as far as 17th Kasey Kane And Mark at Dover

(lap 55) at one point in the race, before rallying to work his way back up the field. By lap 121 Mark had broken back inside the top 10, where he would run for the remaining 279 laps of the race. Mark had moved up to ninth place by lap 192, with the Viagra? Taurus running the fastest times on the track. By lap 278, Mark was running in sixth position.

The team came into the pits for a green flag stop on lap 314 to take on four fresh tires and fuel. Soon after that, things would get really interesting. First, race leader Tony Stewart missed pit road, making the No. 12 of Ryan Newman – the only car who hadn’t pitted – the race leader. Two laps later as Newman attempted to enter the pits, he lost control of the car, turning sideways while taking out the commitment cones that show the entrance to pit road. The spin caused a caution that would catch Mark and all but two other cars a lap down.

The chain of events caused confusion in scoring, and the field ran 26 laps under caution as Nascar sorted out the cars. In the end Mark was awarded the ‘lucky dog’ free pass, as he was the first car one lap down when the caution was issued. The team came into the pits to take on four tires and Mark was in fourth place when the field went green. Since he was the lucky dog, Mark was forced to restart at the tail end of the longest line, which in the end would be a saving grace for Mark and the team.
The minutes leading up to the restarts would prove to be a critical time in the race, as Mark and Tryson sorted out what to do on the restart. Due to the way the caution had come out, several lapped cars were in between Mark and the next car for position.

“We are going to have to be careful here, as there is a good chance for a wreck,” warned Mark to Tryson over the radio.

Mark’s intuition proved true and his experience paid off, as the field had yet to go a full lap when the No. 15 and No. 23 cars connected, started a continuation of events that would see no less than 17 cars caught up in the mayhem before all was said and done. Because he had started at the end of the line, Mark was able to come to a complete stop, before making his way around the wrecked cars and into second position.

“When you had a restart with all those cars a lap down, some of which were in front of the leader, anybody who's been in racing very long knows that they're probably going to wreck,” said Mark.

“Our communication was good, and we strategized throughout the race. One of the key times was right before the big wreck,” added Mark. “We had to start at the tail end of the longest line and the other three guys on the lead lap were up front, so I said ‘we'll never get to them, so there's no use in getting in a hurry here. Let's just miss the wreck, because if there's a caution we can get up there and race them for it. And if there's not, we'll probably never reach them because we got all these lapped cars in between us, so it's important to miss the wreck’, and sure enough, there it was. We almost got in it anyway, and we were watching for it. The track was completely blocked and we had to come to a complete stop to miss it.

“I don't even know what happened,” said Mark. “I was so far behind it, I Our Hero Mark Wins At Dover

couldn't tell you. But I know they were sure wadded up down there when I got there. There was nowhere to go. I mean the track was totally blocked, and I stopped completely, dead still, and waited until some of the track cleared. And that was the only way I would've been able to get through it.”
The field was red-flagged on lap 347 to make time to clean up all the damage caused in the accident. When action resumed, Mark was running in second place, behind the No. 9 car of rookie Kasey Kahne. The team opted to come into the pits for four tires, while the No. 9 stayed out on old tires. The Viagra Race Team won the battle off pit road and Mark held his second-place position once the field went green on lap 353.

Caution was issued again 20 laps later when the No. 2 car brushed the wall. After debating the pro and cons of stopping, Tryson and Mark decided to stay out and not pit and Mark was still running in second place when the field went green with 20 laps remaining in the race on lap 380.

Two laps later Kahne lost control of his No. 9 car, spinning and hitting the wall after getting loose in what some speculated was oil dropped on the track by the No. 41 car. Mark was able to steer by Kahne’s out of control car, taking the lead for the first time of the day, while becoming the ninth and final leader of the race.

Again Mark and Tryson would have an important decision to make as caution was called for the seventh and final time as Kahne’s spinout triggered yet another multi-car accident just behind Mark.

“Pat just made a gutsy call to try and go for it,” said Mark. “If we pitted and put tires on, I'll bet you I'd have hit the oil, too. Our car was right, and I told Pat that I liked those tires. He knew the next set I might not like as good. I told him that was the best the car's been all day, when I was running second the Kasey there, and he made the call. It was a gutsy call and it paid off for us.”

The cars behind Mark opted to pit, including the No 20 car of Stewart that had clearly been the fastest car all day. As the race went green, Mark’s task would be to fend off Stewart – who was on fresh tires – for the nine remaining laps of the event.

Mark would be more than ready for the task, as his No. 6 Viagra Ford would pull away from Stewart. Mark turned some of the fastest lap times of the race, while cruising on to the 34th victory of his storied Cup career, and his first in just over two years.

"It was classic Mark Martin at Dover,” said owner Jack Roush. “He loves this place. He can't wait to get to Dover from one time we're here to the next.”

“It feels really good to go to victory lane,” said Tryson. “It’s really been a long day. We were a little bit off in the beginning, but the Viagra Ford was awesome all day. The team did a great job for us today and Mark really got up on the wheel when he needed to. It’s just an awesome feeling.”

“This team has done it,” said Mark. “I can't tell you exactly what it feels like to race for 25th each week like we did last year, but I can tell you it’s not any fun. These guys have us running in the top-10 again each week, and we're going to keep fighting. We've had a lot of problems this year, but we still want to make that top-10 at the cut. I know we've got a lot of work cut out for us, but these guys are going to do it."

“Our point standings don't reflect anything like what our team has performed like this year, but we still can make the top-10 at the cut if we can keep the bad luck behind us now. We have had the worst luck of any racer that I know of this year. So, today it was our day for it all to go our way instead of it going against us.

“This team has really rallied and come together and I wouldn’t be too surprised if we were to win another one within the next three or four races,” added Mark. “We've had some good cars this year that we didn't get to finish the job off with because of malfunctions. Maybe there's a silver lining to this points thing. If we can continue to run like we're running now and we can have good fortune from now until Richmond, hopefully we’ll be able to make that top-10 cut. And if we do that then we'll be tied for first."

The victory moved Mark up two places to 13th in the Nextel Cup point standings, 442 points behind the leader, but only 75 points outside of the top 10. Mark is currently only 11 points behind 11th place.

The team returns to action next week in Pocono where Mark has scored 14 top-10 finishes in his last 17 races. Mark finished second there last spring.