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thatlook.com 300 New Hampshire International Speedway July 9, 2000 |
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What was the name of this race anyway? The JiffyLube 300? The New England 300? The thatlook.com 300? 
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| Congratulations, Tony Stewart, for the win at the 2000 NASCAR Winston Cup thatlook.com 300 in Loudon, New Hampshire. | ||
Auto racing is the
opposite of baseball. In this sport, it's the team
that's behind that suffers when the game is called
on account of rain.
Mark had everything going his way in Sunday's thatlook.com
300. He was running third with less than 30 laps to go. And
Mark knew that if there were no interruptions, he was going
to finish first."We were just sitting there cruising," Mark said. "We just had to sit there and run. The guys in front of us didn't have enough gas to finish, and the guys behind us couldn't run fast enough to keep up with us." Mark had come in for a pit stop 205 laps into the race. He had enough fuel to stay out on the track until the checkered flag was dropped. Tony Stewart and Joe Nemechek, running 1-2, did not. They'd either come into the pits and get passed by Mark, or roll to a stop - out of gas. The only cloud on Mark's horizon was the cloud bank spitting rain on New Hampshire International Speedway, one that had already caused one 55-minute red flag delay. "It was a light sprinkle," Mark said, "and if it'd stayed a light sprinkle, we could've been sitting up in victory lane." The sprinkle became an ever-stronger shower, then plain old rain. With 27 laps to go, NASCAR officials pulled the cars off the track, never to return. The standings were official. Mark never had a chance to rise above third. And, frankly, Mark wasn't unduly unhappy about getting rained out of first. "If we'd won," Mark said, "it would've been highway robbery. Tony was the class of the field today. We started out wallowing in mediocrity and progressively got better." Mark has had an up-and-down Winston Cup season. At one time, he led the points standings, but five straight poor races dropped him to ninth place. But the thatlook.com 300 continued a midseason rally for Mark and his Valvoline Ford team. "Third is good," Mark said. "This is our fourth top-five in a row. I'm a little bit more grateful when things go good now than I was three months ago." At least, Mark was grateful enough not to waste his breath wishing he could've stopped the rain. |
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