The Protection One 400

Mark and the Viagra®(sildenafil citrate) team had one of their strongest runs of the season Sunday in the inaugural Protection One 400 Mark Martin

at Kansas Speedway. Mark's car had been fast all weekend in practice. He was disappointed with his 23rd place starting position, but felt confident that he would be competitive on Sunday.

Mark began to work his way forward and was able to avoid an accident on the very first lap of the race. The car was a little tight, so the crew made a slight air pressure adjustment during their first stop on lap 51. It seemed to be what the car needed since Mark continued his pursuit to the front. He told the team it was one of the best cars he had driven all season.

The drivers began to cycle through the pits for fuel around lap 120, and Mark pitted for fresh tires and fuel on lap 122. He was pleased with the car and told the team not to make any changes. Since there were a few cars who had pitted out of sequence earlier in the race, Mark was a lap down after his pit stop until those few cars needed gas again. The caution came out on lap 138 for oil on the track while Mark was still a lap down, but as luck would have it, his Roush teammate Matt Kenseth was the leader of the race. Kenseth slowed down enough for Mark to pass him before they took the caution flag. Everyone pitted and Mark returned to the race in 19th place on the lead lap.

The caution flags continued and Mark kept moving forward. He was in 11th place by lap 200 and was running as fast as the leader, Rusty Wallace. When the caution came out on lap 230, Mark only needed six gallons of gas to finish the race. Since he was better on old tires, the team pitted for fuel only in 3.5 seconds and came out of the pits in second place.

With 23 laps to go in the race, Mark was second behind Ricky Rudd. He told the team that his car was good enough to beat Rudd as long as he could stay with him on the restart. Martin did just that on lap 245 when he took the lead from Rudd, but Jeff Gordon passed him on the same lap as Rudd followed Gordon by, and Mark fell to third place.

The 13th caution of the day came out on lap 258. Since there was less than 10 laps to go, NASCAR threw the red flag to stop the field while they cleared the accident. Mark was fourth with six laps to go. He lost a few positions on the restart, but also gained a few back in the final laps to finish in sixth place. He remains in 12th place in the Winston Cup point standings, but now trails 10th place by only 50 points.

"That was the best car I've had in a long time," Mark said. "It sure felt good to be competitive and have a shot at the win. I knew I had something for Ricky (Rudd), but I couldn't hold off Gordon. The Viagra® team did a great job with this car all weekend and it was really fun to race like that again. It felt really good to be a contender again."

Next weekend the Winston Cup teams return to Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.