Monday
Mark Martin Gains in Chase Standings with Runner-Up Finish at Bristol
Press ReleaseChevrolet Continues to Lead Manufacturers’ Cup Standings
With 24 of the 36 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) in the record books, Chevrolet continues to lead the 2009 Manufacturers’ Cup standings. Team Chevy continues to have six drivers in the Chase standings.
A total of four Team Chevy drivers captured top-10 finishes in the 500-lap/266.5-mile race. Ryan Newman, No. 39 US Army Impala SS, finished sixth in tonight’s race and jumped two positions in the standings to seventh place.
Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Impala SS, looked to be heading for his first victory at Bristol when an issue with the right rear during a pit stop forced the three-time and defending champion to return to pit road dropping from the lead to 21st position. He rallied back to finish eighth and sits second in the standings.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr., No.88 AMP Sugar Free/National Guard Impala SS, finished in ninth place.
Points leader and two-time NSCS champion Tony Stewart, No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Impala SS, persevered through radio issues and electrical problems to finish 33rd tonight. He remains on top of the points order with a margin of 220 points.
Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Impala SS, also had an uncharacteristically issue-plagued race and took the checkered flag in 23rd position. He is third in the point standings.
Juan Pablo Montoya, No. 42 Target Impala SS, ran strongly in the top-10 until a late race flat tire relegated him to the 25th finishing position. Montoya dropped two positions in the standings to ninth.
Kyle Busch (Toyota) won the race. Marcos Ambrose (Toyota), Greg Biffle (Ford) and Denny Hamlin (Toyota) completed the top-five finishers.
After the final “off” weekend of the season, the Series picks up again on September 6, 2009 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
MARK MARTIN, NO. 5 POP TARTS/CARQUEST IMPALA SS – Finished 2nd
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
KERRY THARP: We’ll roll into our post race here for the Sharpie 500. Tonight’s race runner up, his one thousandth career NASCAR National Series start, Mark Martin, driver of the No. 5 Kellogg’s Carquest Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
You certainly had a very strong car tonight. You led a lot of laps. Moved up a couple spots in the standings. Your thoughts about how tonight’s race unfolded.
MARK MARTIN: Well, you know, I’d first like to say that it was incredible what the fans did here tonight. In my opinion, a thousand starts ain’t no big deal. But what they did made me cry. It’s pretty cool. Almost get emotional thinking about it again.
I love this sport as much as they do. I’m so grateful to have a chance to do what I did tonight, which is drive a really fast racecar and finish where it was running. We’ve had so much trouble this year, not finishing like we ran. It was cool.
Yeah, we ran second, but I bet we had the fans on their feet those last few laps. You know, that’s cool.
KERRY THARP: We’ll start with questions.
Q. Mark, your philosophy on last laps. Quite clear you were not going to make contact. How do you not go back and wonder about all the races you could have won had you used your bumper?
MARK MARTIN: If you watched that race real close, I didn’t need to use the bumper. Kyle gave me all the room in the world to make that pass, and I didn’t make it. That’s one thing.
If somebody abused me enough to really, really irritate me, I might use that bumper. But Kyle gave me all the room in the world. It’s a good thing because I was over my head when I went in that corner and I got loose. If he’d have been crowding me, we both would have went up to the wall. I’m really grateful for that.
He raced me like a good sport. When he’s behind me, I will be comfortable that he will race me the same way that I raced him. I can’t say how he might race someone else on the racetrack because they may have different history. But I feel really, really good at night when I go to bed. I have managed to win a race or two, and none of ‘em did I have to pull something dirty.
Q. Mark, on the restarts, the race leader can get on the gas well before the start/finish line. You’re second. How much of a disadvantage is it that you can’t pass him before you get to the start/finish line?
MARK MARTIN: Well, the double file restart, I mean, you can’t start picking that apart. No, I wasn’t in the best line the whole second half of the race. I was always on the inside. So that was a disadvantage. Probably not as big a disadvantage as single file and lining up behind the leader. Maybe it was because there was one instance where I lost second place, you know, because I was on the inside. But that’s the breaks.
We raced really hard. Anybody that thinks that I was soft out there on the racetrack tonight wasn’t watching. I raced my guts out. And my team gave me an incredible car. We made a race out of it.
Q. Mark, not only did you get out of here unscathed, you nearly won the thing. You gained 48 points in the big picture tonight. What is that sense of relief tonight?
MARK MARTIN: It’s not enough. But it’s much better than last week (laughter). I really, really would be a lot more comfortable with 150. And we had that leaving Indy. Everything turned upside down. We will be fine if we finish how we run, absolutely.
But, you know, I don’t have the greatest of confidence that, you know, the things we can’t control are going to be kind to us because we haven’t had an average year for those things. It hasn’t been average.
Anyway, I’m sure that we’ll run really good at Atlanta and I’m sure we’ll run really good at Richmond. You know, if it comes down to just flat out racing, and not a bunch of, you know, cautions and crashes and flat tires, people stay out, all that mess, rain comes, all that stuff that’s happened to us this year, if we can just go out and race for it, it’s going to be great.
I had a good time tonight. I had a really great racecar. I felt that that was a great battle right there at the end with Kyle. He didn’t even attempt to pinch me, crowd me or anything else. He gave me more than enough racing room to pull it off, and I just couldn’t get it done on the bottom that quick. We weren’t that much better. We were just pretty equal. I got a good handful of wheel and managed to get beside him and get the fans on their feet.
Q. When you see Kyle Busch, looking at his record here, running third, what goes through your mind in terms of wondering what is he going to do, how is he going to do it?
MARK MARTIN: You know, all those guys out there are incredibly talented racecar drivers. Kyle’s driving personality isn’t that different than a number of others that I was racing with. We’re racing, going for it, you know. I expect Kyle to race me hard. I expect him to race me clean. And he has. He can expect the same from me.
Q. Mark, why do you think the fans here loved you so much and hated Kyle so much? What was it like toward that end with those two things colliding?
MARK MARTIN: You know about Kyle. You don’t need me to say anything about that. He has won a lot of races. I’ll tell you, anybody that wins a whole lot gets booed. Jeff Gordon never did anything, in my opinion, to get booed. And he got booed a lot because he won a lot. That’s part of the sport. Kyle’s incredibly talented and he’s won a lot. That’s part of it.
The other part is he’s kind of antagonized his detractors, as well, which doesn’t help any either. I don’t know why they were so kind to me tonight. Maybe they realize that the reason that I’ve been around for a thousand races is because I love it as much as they do.
Q. (No microphone.)
MARK MARTIN: I didn’t catch that completely. When you guys watch that race, you don’t know how over my head I am to be there. You know, if it was so easy, I would have passed him. But I was over my head just being there.
Just like Marcos (Ambrose) said, Dick Trickle told me in 1977, in order to finish first, first you must finish. And I almost didn’t finish. I was so close to losing control of my car when I got on the inside of him. Y’all can’t see that.
I guess you have a hard time grasping that if I could have, I would have passed him, but I couldn’t. And I was also so out of control that if we’d have touched, I would have wrecked, too, because I didn’t have control of my car. If I thought, Well, I’ll just go up there and rub him out, well, I’d have wrecked.
I was already just about to wreck. You guys can’t see that. But, man, I was right here. I was just about gone. And so was Kyle. I mean, he’s doing everything he could.
So, man, I’m sorry, Dustin, that I didn’t win, but I tried hard (smiling). I tried really hard. And I know it’s points. And it’s a trophy. And it’s everything else. It’s a win. But that’s all I had in that little 16 seconds that I had. If you’d have gave me 20 laps, I might have, could have got it done. In that 16 second span that I had to get it done, that was all I had.
Q. Mark, when you’re out on the track, as a driver, is being in a really fast car going door to door with somebody who is equally as talented as you are, win, lose or draw for the last 20 laps, is that pretty much as much fun as you can have as a driver?
MARK MARTIN: It’s a lot more fun than not going door to door and not being able to see anybody out there. Even though you have to take second sometimes, that grind and that grit, that push and that challenge, you know, is way more rewarding than running away easy.
You got to get your wins. And I’ve had enough. I like those run aways, easy ones, too, because I like to pile ‘em up. But definitely a very gratifying race. I’m not disappointed that we ran second and I’m proud that we had the fans on their feet. And we’ll get ours. We have already this year. And we’ll get ‘em again.
Q. When you’re out there on the track, doing it, is it as much fun as when you were 18 or 20 on a dirt track, kind of going balls out?
MARK MARTIN: To be real honest with you, what I was explaining to Dustin, it’s really only fun when you look back. At the time I don’t know what Marcos would say, but it wasn’t fun to me. It was really, really, really hard, you know. I have drove a racecar before and laughed, was laughing. I wasn’t having any laughs out there. There was some serious business going on there, and I thought I was going to do something stupid and spin out and mess this up again.
So it’s so hard at the time that I don’t think you realize the fun in it as much as now that it’s over with, yeah, that was fun and, yeah, it was really cool. I’m sure the fans were on their feet. That’s cool.
Q. Was it so much fun that it made you wonder if you could have had five more laps, might have been different?
MARK MARTIN: Well, it might have been different with five more laps. But we didn’t have ‘em. You know, we could have had a flat tire if there had been five more laps. I’m glad the thing’s over with really, to be honest with you. We’ve had so much trouble this year, I really did want to make the pass. When I got completely beside him, I thought, This is going to be tough on the inside, but I’m completely beside him. Only problem was, my car was out of control, you know, for an instant there. It wasn’t like I could mash the gas and accelerate and start finalizing the pass there. I got in there over my head (laughter).
I’ll take it. It was a great race. It’s not like we haven’t won one this year. We might win some more if we keep running like that. We really gave it our all.
Q. You don’t know what it’s like up here when there’s 10 laps to go and there’s five minutes to get the story in, and we ask these stupid ass questions because we don’t know what happened because we’re doing five things at once. We have to ask you that so can you let us know how hard it was.
MARK MARTIN: Yeah, well that’s cool (laughter). Thank you. It means a lot. Boy, I’m not sure that you guys realized how hard I was really trying. For a brief moment, Marcos was sitting pretty to win the race there. I don’t know what it looked like to you, but I knew I was in trouble there for a second.
KERRY THARP: Congratulations. Put on a great show for us tonight. Thank you.
MARK MARTIN: Thank you.
FastScripts by ASAP Sports
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Article Tags: Bristol Motor Speedway, Mark Martin, NASCAR, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, NSCS, Sharpie 500, Team Chevy
