Mark, whose fifth-place finish was his
third top five this season, said his Rousch Racing Ford was just
"a tick" off in the Darlington event. "If it had gone longer,
we might have had a chance to do a little better, but we didn't, so
we'll take fifth and go on," Mark said, who now has has five top-10
finishes in the last seven events at the 1.366-mile track. Mark
led once for two laps, and moved up one position in the Winston
Cup standings to fourth.
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A day earlier, Mark had the pole on the
Diamond Hill Plywood 200 Busch race turning in a track-record-effort
of 166.568 mph on the first of his two qualifying laps. On his second
circuit, he wrecked coming off turn four. He slapped the wall with the
right side of his Rousch Racing Ford, but the damage was not enough
to bring out a backup. However during the race, while Mark was running 10th,
he was damaged so severely in a restart incident that he pulled into
the garage, through for the day. If ever there was a simple racing
accident, this was it. Nobody's fault, really. It just happened.
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"They took off and then slammed the brakes on,
so I plowed the back of somebody," Mark said. "I don't know what happened. They took
off and then stopped. It was a good run. I was disappointd because I
wanted to run that car in Texas, but they won't have time to fix
it now." Mark ended up 39th for the day.
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