surrounded by notepads and microphones, then replied once again to this
repeated inquiry about being racing's recurrent runner-up."I have to consistently explain why my career is not in a crisis," Mark said. "My glass is very full. There probably is room in it for a couple of things that aren't in there yet, but it's very full."
What's missing, of course, is a Winston Cup championship. Last season, for the fourth time in his career, Mark was second best. Four other years, he has placed third.
"I would hate to think that my career would be a failure if I never won a championship," Mark said. "I don't think there is any jeopardy of my career being a failure. I am very proud of what I've been able to accomplish."
The record backs up the 44-year-old driver's claim. Mark has 33 victories and 200 finishes in the top five in more than 500 Winston Cup starts. He embarks on his 20th season and what may be his last best chance to snare that championship.
Mark heads to the season-opening Daytona 500 with all the benefits of the overwhelming presence of Roush Racing. The operation adds a fifth Winston Cup team for 2003, moving last year's Busch champion Greg Biffle into the lineup with Mark, Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch.
Roush drivers won 10 races last season, including four of the final five. Three of them ranked in the top 10 of the standings with Mark second, Busch third and Kenseth eighth. Kenseth had a series-leading five victories. Busch won four times, including three of those final five.
Owner Jack Roush said, "If I had to look and say, `Which guys are going to reign supreme this year?' it's awful hard for me not to pick Kurt. It's awful hard for me not to pick Matt. It's awful hard for me not to pick Mark, and it's awful hard for me not to pick Jeff. I look at them, and I can say any one and it's not wrong."
Mark led the standings with eight races to go last year. He closed out the season with finishes of second, fourth and fourth but still fell 38 points short of champion Tony Stewart. The day before the final race, Mark's appeal of a 25-point NASCAR penalty for using an unapproved part was denied.
The tale was just another of the oh-so-close runs Mark has made at a championship. He led Dale Earnhardt with only two races left in 1990, but early in the season, Mark had been docked 46 points for a rules violation. Earnhardt won the title by 26. In 1998, Mark won seven races and finished second in six others, a championship performance in almost any other year. Jeff Gordon won 13 and the title. The year before, Mark led the standings with 10 races to go but came in third, 29 points back of Gordon in the closest three-way finish in Winston Cup history.
Still, Mark never expected such a standout performance in 2002, his first
season with new crew chief Ben Leslie and a revamped No. 6 team. "A lot of
things about our deal look a whole lot better than a year ago," Mark said.
"Last year at this time, we didn't have a pit crew in shape yet. We didn't
have any cars together except the speedway car. All those pieces are in
place now."We have a lot of things going for us, but that doesn't always carry over to performance on the race track. What we do should be better than what we did in 2002, but I can't tell you what everybody else is going to do. You're going to measure our success by everybody else's."
Much of the competition will come from other Roush regulars. Kenseth and Busch carry the momentum from all their victories. Burton is hoping to rebound from his first winless season in six years.
"We tried and tried to get to where we needed to be and we just couldn't get there, so something had to change," said Burton, who switched crew chiefs late last season, replacing Frank Stoddard with Paul Andrews.
"You never want to be the worst-performing team in a multi-car team," Burton added. "It is not a position that I enjoyed being in."
