NASCAR Cup

Darlington: Mark Martin preview

MARTIN, NO. 6 TEAM LOOKS TO REBOUND AT DARLINGTON After exhibiting one of the strongest cars in the field, Martin and the No. 6 Viagra Racing Team were forced to settle for a disappointing 33rd place finish after getting caught up in a massive ...

Published: May 4, 2005, 8:25 PM

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MARTIN, NO. 6 TEAM LOOKS TO REBOUND AT DARLINGTON

After exhibiting one of the strongest cars in the field, Martin and the No. 6 Viagra Racing Team were forced to settle for a disappointing 33rd place finish after getting caught up in a massive 25-car accident at Talladega. The team will look to rebound this weekend at Darlington where Martin finished second last fall.

Chassis Number: (RK-231) - The team will run RK-231 this weekend at Darlington. RK-231 finished seventh in its only other start this season at Fontana. It was considered Martin's strongest car last season.

Worthy Note: Martin won the famed Southern 500 in 1993. In addition, he has finished inside the top 10 in sixty percent of his races there.

IN THE POINTS

Sunday's finish dropped Martin to 11th place and outside of the top 10 in the Nextel Cup point standings for the first time in 20 weeks. However, after nine races, Martin is only one point behind 10th and 98 points behind fifth.

MARTIN AT DARLINGTON

Martin has finished inside the top 10 in sixty percent of his 38 starts at the 'Track Too Tough to Tame.' All in all Martin has 16 top-fives, 23 top-10's, two poles and a win in the 1993 Southern 500. In addition, Martin won eight Busch races at Darlington, making him one of the most successful drivers in the tracks famed history.

FIRST AND THE LAST

Martin earned his first top-10 finish at Darlington in his first start, a seventh place finish in the the 1982 Rebel 500. He finished second there last fall in his last race at the 1.36-mile track. He'll be looking to close his Darlington career out in the same fashion with a strong run.

MARKMARTINSALUTE.COM LAUNCHES

Mark Martin will make his final run at the Nextel Cup title in 2005. Martin has dubbed 2005 as his "Salute to You" tour, a year in which he hopes to take the time to thank each and everyone that he feels played a role in his success, including team members, fans, NASCAR and the media.

QUOTING MARK AND PAT --ON DARLINGTON

"Darlington is a cool track that I've always liked. I ran second there to Dale Earnhardt twice in '89 and '90 and finally won in '93. Sometime I think that people seem to forget that I won a Southern 500. I've had a lot of success at Darlington and an enormous amount of Busch wins. The place brings back some great memories of some great battles. Actually the win in '93 was four in a row and that was a big deal.

"It's a jagged oval. It's not a smooth radius turn. The wall goes in and out and in an out. Your line is as smooth as anywhere else, but the tracks all over the place. You go from touching the apron to touching the wall and you've never even changed directions. It's really narrow and banked a lot. The cars go really fast and the track goes everywhere so it's always a challenge, but after Talladega you can't help but really look forward to that kind of racing again.

"We had a tough finish last week and Darlington could be the perfect place to get back on track. We really need a solid run and we are really looking forward to the next round of tracks we have coming up."

PAT TRYSON

"Darlington is a great race track and I can't wait to get out there. It's one of those tracks with a lot of history and it's a great place to race. We are looking forward to getting Talladega and restrictor plate racing behind us and getting out there at Darlington and hopefully making some noise."

-rr-

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