The 2003 Subway 500

Mark makes it no secret that Martinsville is not his favorite track on the Mark and the 6 car

Nextel Cup circuit. With 43 cars on the small .566 oval it can get really crowded and passing is difficult. However Mark spent the majority of Sunday’s Subway 500 patiently moving through the field. The Viagra® Team started 23rd and Mark spent the first 130 laps of the caution-filled race patiently working his way through traffic and inside the top 15. Mark moved inside the top 10 on lap 182. His momentum would carry him all the way to sixth place and the team looked poised for a top-five finish. However five cautions in the race’s final 84 laps foiled the team’s pit strategy and Mark was forced to settle for a 12th-place finish.

Mark was 10th and on the run when the day’s 12th caution was called on lap 408. Crew chief Pat Tryson opted to come into the pits for the fifth time of the day, for four fresh tires and fuel. Several cars opted for different pit strategies, including staying out and Mark was in 13th place when the field went green on lap 416. Five more cautions during the race’s final 84 laps would limit green flag racing to about 30 laps, giving Mark only enough time to advance to 12th place on the fresh tires before the checkered flag dropped.

“It was a good effort by this team,” said Mark. “We just weren’t able to race our way back up front with all those cautions there at the end. If we could have gotten just a few green flag laps in there we would have at least been able to get back inside the top 10, but the team had great stops and we had a pretty good car so overall it was a solid effort by this Viagra® Team.”

Two of the race’s 17 cautions were issued by the 24th lap of the race, as the constant yellow flags continued to halt Mark’s movement. The team was solid in the pits, posting back-to-back stops of 13.82 and 14.16 seconds to help move Mark’s Viagra® Ford up to eighth place by lap 184.Mark was held up by lapped traffic and dropped back to 12th position by lap 215. Mark regrouped and marched back up the field passing the No. 20 car of Tony Stewart for sixth place on lap 278. Mark was still running in sixth when the day’s eighth caution was called on lap 293. The team came into the pits for four tires and fuel and used another excellent stop of 13.94 seconds to hold serve and stay in sixth.

Mark was in seventh when the team came into the pits under yet another caution on lap 356. A problem with the right front tire forced the team’s worst stop of the day and Mark lost position in the pits. That combined with several other cars staying out dropped Mark back to 16th place when the field went green on lap 356. However Mark’s Ford was fast and he moved back inside the top 10 by lap 406, just before caution was called two laps later.

"We ran good,” added Mark. “It's a shame that three weeks in a row we've run better than we finished. It's kind of a shame. If we want to win this championship, we need to finish better than we've run and some of these guys have been doing that. We were a fifth to seventh place car easy, but we lost a little track position and then we didn't get a chance to race it the whole last 100 laps. Our car was great on the long run. It was incredible. I would come from 15th to fifth or sixth on a 70-lap run or something. If we would have gone green that last 70 or 80 laps, we could have got back into the top 10 - probably close to fifth. Our car never did slow down. It would keep on coming and I was real proud of that. I thought we ran good for me at Martnsville, we just didn't finish that good."

Mark remains in fifth place in the Nextel Cup point standings, 224 points behind leader Kurt Busch with four races remaining. The team returns to action next week in Atlanta where Mark will pull triple duty, running in the ASA, Busch and Nextel Cup races.