Had the heavens not opened up with dousing rains Sunday, the
thatlook.300 was almost certainly Mark's race to lose.Had the race remained under green-flag conditions, race-winner Tony Stewart and second-place Joe Nemechek both would have had to pit for fuel. Mark, however, had gone well over 100 laps on a tank of fuel earlier in the race, and thus could've easily made it to the finish line without pitting.
"The guys in front of us had to stop and we didn't," Mark said. "Everybody that could make it we had covered real good, so we were just sitting there cruising. The last set of tires we got on the car we got the setup right and we were setting the best laps we had run all day. There was no problem as far as fuel whereas the guys in front of us had to stop.
"The last stop we were actually cutting some really good laps, but we didn't really need to. We were sitting in a real good position with enough gas to go all the way. Everybody behind us wasn't able to keep up with us and two guys in front of us had to stop for gas, so it was a pretty straight-forward deal -- just sit here and ride and hope the light sprinkle stayed that way. Great strategy by the team, great fuel mileage, great team effort today. That was our only chance to win and we were set up for it."
Although Mark was in prime position to gain his second win of the season, It was discovered in post-race inspection that his car was too low to the ground. Thus, even if he had taken the checkered flag as the leader, he may not have reaped the rewards.
On Monday, Jimmy Fennig, crew chief for the No. 6 NASCAR Winston Cup Series team, was fined $25,000 and penalized under Section 12-4-T in the 2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Series rule book: "...any car found to be under the specified height requirement after the completion of time trials or the race..." and Section 12-4-A: "...actions deemed detrimental to stock car racing..."
NASCAR allowed Mark to retain his third-place finishing
position, and more importantly the 170 championship points
that go with it. Over the past two months, Mark's luck has
been marginal at best. He failed to post a top-10 during the
five-week span between California and Michigan, marking his
longest top-10 drought since the 1989 Daytona 500.
During that span, Mark dropped from atop the points
standings to as low as ninth. However, after four-consecutive
top-5s, he has rebounded to sixth and has his sights set
much higher.Earlier this season, Mark 'stole' a victory at Marksville when he opted to stay out on the race's final caution. Rusty Wallace was by far the dominant car, but Mark's pit strategy resulted in victory. It almost happened again Sunday.
"If it never would have picked up beyond a light sprinkle, then I feel confident we would be sitting here in victory lane," Mark said. "It would have been robbery. The 20 car was the class of the field, but we've lost a lot of races to fuel mileage and I think we've only won one to fuel mileage, so it would have been nice to have made it two today. Some people were gonna be frustrated if it had gone green all the way, but it certainly wouldn't have been us."
