NASCAR Cup
Darlington II: Mark Martin preview
Martin Looks To Tame Darlington After a tough week at Phoenix, Mark Martin and the Viagra Team will head to Darlington where they will attempt to pick up Martin's second career win at the track "Too tough to tame." With two races remaining in the ...
Published: Nov 10, 2004, 5:48 PM
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Martin Looks To Tame Darlington
After a tough week at Phoenix, Mark Martin and the Viagra Team will head to Darlington where they will attempt to pick up Martin's second career win at the track "Too tough to tame." With two races remaining in the season Martin and the Viagra Team will look to pick up their second win of the year and continue to move up the Nextel Cup standings.
Chassis Number: (RK-118) - The team will run RK-118 at Darlington this weekend. RK-118 was nothing short of a rocket ship in its dominating debut at Atlanta two weeks ago.
Worthy Note: Martin scored a top-10 finish in his first ever Cup race at Darlington in April of '82.
THE CHASE FOR THE NEXTEL CUP - MARTIN TOP FIVE WITH TWO TO GO
Martin is currently in fifth place in the Nextel Cup point's race, with only two races remaining. Martin is currently 102 points outside of first place and 54 points behind fourth.
ONLY TWO REMAIN
Martin has one win at the remaining two tracks, with that win coming in 1993 in the fall race at Darlington. Martin has a combined 17 top-fives, 25 top 10's and two poles in 42 combined starts at Darlington and Homestead. Martin has finished in the top 10 in 60 percent of his combined starts at those two tracks.
MARTIN AT DARLINGTON
This will be Martin's 38th start at Darlington Raceway where the veteran driver has tallied 22 top-10 finishes and 14 top fives. Martin ran his first race at the track on April 4, 1982 where he finished seventh; Martin finished seventh at Darlington in the spring. While racing in the Busch Series, Martin won a record seven poles and tallied a record-seven victories at Darlington. For his efforts in the Busch Series at Darlington, Martin was named the Grand Marshal of the Busch race there in 2003.
QUOTING MARK AND PAT ON DARLINGTON
"Darlington is a track that I love racing at, because it's a 'handling' race track where guys like myself excel because we can help out so much in the handling department. You have to be able to go really fast through the corners, and you have to be able to handle well in order to put the car where it needs to be. It's a great track for racing and I always look forward to going there.
"We had a lot better car than we had finish last week, so it's important that we come out and run well at Darlington. We are looking to be really strong at the last two tracks and I think that we should have a shot at winning at both Darlington and Homestead. We've been a lot better over the last 10 races than our finishes show. We've had good cars, but we've had trouble getting to where we need to be, so hopefully we can close the season out with a couple of really strong efforts."
PAT TRYSON
"This team is excited about going to Darlington. Mark loves to race there and his finishes usually show that. We are taking the same car that we used in Atlanta two weeks ago, and it was really fast there, so hopefully we can post a similar run. Only this time hopefully we'll end up in victory lane. We have two races left in the season and we will look to make a serious run at winning both of them."
Mark Martin Fast Facts at DARLINGTON
* Martin has won once at Darlington (9/5/93), with the win coming in the fall race.
* Martin has won two poles at Darlington, both in the spring race ('89 and '98).
* Martin won a record seven times at Darlington in the Busch Series. He also recorded a record seven poles there in the series.
* Martin's 15 top-10 finishes are more than any other active driver at Darlington.
* Martin finished seventh in his first ever race at Darlington in April of 1982.
* Martin has finished inside the top 10 in 22 of 36 total Cup races at Darlington.
-rr-
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