perfectionist would seem like a dog-eat-dog relationship, but that's
not so in the No. 6 camp.Mark and Ben Leslie may appear to be an odd couple, yet with four races remaining in the 2002 season, guess who's one of three drivers in the championship mix?
Mark sits second behind Tony Stewart after his 8th place finish at Sunday's NAPA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Jimmie Johnson is now third after he spun twice and finished 22nd
"If anybody has a problem, if anybody stumbles, we've gotta be on top of our game to capitalize hugely," Leslie said, "because there's only so many chances left."
One reason Mark has those opportunities is his partnership with Leslie. Leslie is a mystery outside the Winston Cup garage -- not as recognized as Greg Zipadelli, Stewart's crew chief, or the new-star-quantity of Johnson's chief, Chad Knaus -- but similarly influential.
Then there's the age thing.
"One day halfway through the season I found out he was just 30," said the 44-year-old Mark, who, while describing his surprise, pronounced what may be NASCAR's most-coveted informal compliment:
"I thought he was older than what he is because he's a racer," Mark explained. "He's been around racing. He's very mature personally and professionally. So it's kind of a shocker."
So is Mark's 2002 season -- a February unknown that's morphed into October contention. First, there was upheaval: Owner Jack Roush flip-flopped Mark's and teammate Kurt Busch's crews during the offseason -- moving Leslie and his guys to the No. 6, and Mark's longtime chief, Jimmy Fennig and his guys to the No. 97. Then the Mark-Leslie union got lost among other early-season stories, including the emergence of rookies Johnson and Ryan Newman, and Sterling Marlin's domination.
But numbers tell the long-term tale: Mark has been out of the top 10 in points only once this season -- a 21st place finish at Rockingham in February temporarily dropped him to 11th. Prior to his win at the Coca-Cola 600 in May, Mark had logged seven top-10 finishes in 12 events.
"It was more of a hump in the press's eye," Leslie said of the 600 win. He cited third-place finishes at Las Vegas and Texas, an eighth at Martinsville -- not one of Mark's favorite tracks -- and a fourth at Richmond two weeks before the Charlotte victory.
"We had some real good runs up to that point and we felt like we had what we needed done, or it was certainly coming together," Leslie added. "That was more just putting a mark on."
Mark surged into the top three after Michigan's June race, and hasn't left since. He led the standings two straight weeks in September before engine problems forced an early exit at Kansas City. Other mechanical gremlins have kept him from regaining the top spot -- a bizarre power-steering problem at Talladega on the final warm-up lap (he finished 30th) and another engine bug the next week at Charlotte (he finished 16).
But the return to Charlotte was the clearest indication to date of team unity. Leslie estimates that Mark had a top-10 car at best, yet when a cylinder dropped with 40 laps to go, no chins dropped with it. Mark's driving grit combined with good pit stops and Leslie's fix-it-then-focus attitude, earned a top-20 result (and extra points for leading a few laps).
"So I look at that as if there is ever a situation that you could have
just thrown it all away, that happened late enough in the race to
frustrate everybody, but still enough time left to really step on your
toes if you wanted to," Leslie said. "And nobody did. And on top of
everything, we were able to get five extra bonus points with all that
going on.""Most of the young guys are big-league before people recognize it in the garage," Mark said of Leslie. "He is definitely capable of leading any team in the Winston Cup garage. There's no team that he couldn't step in and lead. There's no team in the top 10 that he couldn't step and lead and do a fabulous job."
Certainly, Mark had nothing to lose by pairing with Leslie.
After 12 consecutive seasons of top-10 points finishes - nine in the top five -- his 12th-place finish in 2001 mirrored Roush Racing's company-wide slump as teammates Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth and Busch also struggled. The tumble also ended his longtime partnership with Fennig. The two have known each other since the mid-1980s, when they first linked up in the Midwest's American Speed Association, and they'd spent the past five seasons as a Cup duo.
But familiarity had turned into a liability.
"When Mark wasn't able to do in the car what he wanted, Jimmy wasn't able to help him because they both had so much of the same experience that they couldn't challenge each other," Roush said. "One would start a sentence and the other would finish it."
"Had a lot of things going on there," Mark said. "Had deep, deep, deep ties and a relationship, but I was at a point where I needed someone, and wanted someone, to look at things and challenge me, challenge my direction."
Enter Leslie, who prior to last year's stint as Busch's crew chief had worked 10 races with Johnny Benson in 1999 and six with Kyle Petty in 2000. A long history with his older brother Tracy in the Busch series, plus several years as a Roush mechanic, car chief and fill-in crew chief further stocked his resume.
And he wasn't a stranger to Mark. Leslie had worked as a mechanic on some of Mark's teams in the mid-90s, then as the car chief in 1997. He'd also worked one season on Mark's Busch Series pit crew.
"I already had an idea of how everything worked, Mark's intensity and
everything that comes along with that," Leslie said.When Roush decided to swap Fennig and Leslie and their crews, Leslie brought along his mechanics, pit crew and body-hangers in the shop. Leslie also decided to rebuild the No. 6 team's inventory -- all new cars for 2002. Several early tests -- at Las Vegas and Richmond -- confirmed his and Mark's hunches about current handling and aerodynamic issues. The mix of Leslie's right-here, right-now knowledge with Mark's old-school background proved regenerative.
"It's kind of [like], you're getting to the same place, you're just changing the path," Leslie said. "That path is all we've really had to work around cause there's actually been some stuff that he's found out that shocked me, and there's been stuff that I've brought to him that's shocked him.
"At the end of the day we're still getting the car to feel the same way that it did in '89, '90 and '92, you're just getting there [differently]."
Also integral is Mark's and Leslie's relationship. Leslie is calm and insistent, while Mark is renowned for his hands-on intensity. He admits he's backed off the finger-in-every-pie aspect of his job this season, and that Leslie's imperturbability makes it easier when they're searching for answers.
"So there's times when we work on the car intensely, you know?" Mark said. "And at the end of the day I don't have to worry about hurting his feelings, and he doesn't have to worry about hurting my feelings. All we want to do is run good when it's all done with. Nobody got bruised."
"Ben doesn't care," Roush said of Mark's obsessive-ness. "Whatever's on his mind, that's what they talk about and then they make a meal out of it."
Mark says he knows he occasionally intimidates people, but he doesn't mean to. He only knows what works for him and doesn't have time to waste on feel-good padding.
"And Ben doesn't seem to be intimidated by those things," Mark said. "He takes that quickly, digests it, and then he takes the waste of -- or what he thinks might be waste -- and he looks me in the eye and he says, 'I'm not sure about this part, now. Are you?'
"It's a good thing. Because I wasn't right about everything, or otherwise I'd have been winning races in 2001."
