The 2002 New England 300

Mark and the No. 6 Viagra® (sildenafil citrate) Racing Team did all they could The Blue Crew at work

Sunday, racing to a 16th place finish in the New England 300 in Loudon, New Hampshire. For the No. 6 team the finish snapped a string of five-consecutive top-10 finishes and marks the second time all year that Mark has not finished in the top-15 of the race, while running every lap.

"We did all we could," said Mark. "We had a bad day and brought home a reasonable finish. Instead of making it worse, we just did what we could. I was a little disappointed at the end. We lost a bunch of spots when maybe we shouldn't have, but we gained a bunch we probably shouldn't have too."

Mark climbed to as high as eighth place during the race, and was running in 11th place late. With only one groove in which to race, track conditions were tough for the race and several cars slammed into the walls on turns three and four - bringing an early end for many of the field's drivers and teams.

Mark and the No. 6 team opted to get what they could out of the race, rather than take a chance at losing control into the wall and dropping valuable points in the championship race.

"It was tough out there today," added Mark. "We didn't run that great. We struggled and had problems, but we did what we had to do. We finished as good as we could with what we had. We didn't make it worse for ourselves. We brought home what we could. I wish we could have done a little bit better, but that's where we wound up."

"The track was tough to drive on," said Mark. "I just don't know if they can do anything to make this race track acceptable. I know they try. I know how hard they try, but that doesn't mean that this race track is any good to race on. It's really, really a shame that we had to race under those conditions."

Mark qualified 17th on Friday, after getting a bad qualifying draw after the track had been quite for a while and the grease started to settle. The poor qualifying draw, combined with difficult racing conditions made it hard to maneuver through the field.

Still, Mark and the No. 6 team were able to race to the 16th place finish and stay in second place in the Winston Cup Points race, 55 points behind the leader and 37 points ahead of third.

Mark and the No. 6 Viagra® Racing team return to Pocono next weekend for the Pennsylvania 500.