alive. The push that Mark put forward to catch Tony Stewart to claim the
2002 Winston Cup Championship, while coming up a few markers short,
showed that he’s nowhere close to cresting the hill."I guess a couple of things I really want to say is, I never really looked at this thing this year and allowed myself to think that I would win it and that's a good thing because I feel no letdown now,” Mark said a short while after the Ford 400.
Continuing, Mark added, “But I had so many people that wanted me to win it so bad, that I almost got afraid that they were gonna be letdown so bad and I was gonna let them down. I guess what I'm trying to say is thank you. Thank you to all the competitors that felt that way and all the fans and all the people that I know. I want to thank them. I gave it everything I had from January testing to the last lap today. I'm not disappointed with the outcome.
“Probably one of the things I'm most proud of is that we beat Tony on the race track the last three races in a row. I don't know how you do that. That is a tall order.”
Indeed it is, but that’s what Mark did. And it took a team effort and some very inspired driving to do it.
The car that Mark had at the start of Sunday’s race was not a contender for the Top 15, let alone able to get ahead of Stewart to deduct a few more points from his lead.
Mark drove the heck out of his ride on the first run last Sunday, running the right front to the cords as he flung his car trying to gain position. That’s when Ben Leslie, the man who’s prepared great cars for Mark all year, started dialing in Mark’s car to where it was a stout little hot rod.
With the car closer to the front of the pack, Mark put it on his shoulder and began to carry it as far as he could in the 400-mile event. He ran the path less traveled by pounding his car across the apron in the turns to make up as much time as he could.
"The apron made it interesting, that's for sure,” said Mark’s teammate
Jeff Burton. “The craziest thing is to run down by the grass. That's just
ridiculous. Some people did it and had great success doing it. I got behind
Mark and he was just hauling *** down there in the grass. I tried it, but
I couldn't do it.”The image of Mark’s bouncing ride off the turns showed that he was not leaving anything on the table – nothing.
That was a fact not lost on car owner Jack Roush, who responded to a media question on the size of Mark’s heart by saying, "Did you see the race today? Did you see [Mark] go three-wide down there in Turn 2 in the closing laps? That's vintage Mark.”
There was a lot of “vintage Mark” in 2002, from the inspirational driving in the closing laps of the Coke 600 – where he won his team and a fan $1 million each from RJ Reynolds No Bull 5 program, to his final dash at Homestead last Sunday.
"Maybe I should have prepared something, because I'm blank,” Mark responded when he was asked on his feeling of the season long push. “I don't feel disappointed, I don't feel excited, I don't feel anything right now. I just raced my brains out in the middle of the pack half the day and had a triumphant fourth-place finish and made it a tremendous points race and made it close. That's all I know. I'm just blank other than that.”
Mark should be proud of the work he did this year with his Roush team – after all, many of his peers are.
And the season-long push for points put seven Ford cars total in the Top 10. Roush can take credit for three of those, Penske Racing South two, and Robert Yates Racing –got both of its cars in the Top-10.
