Hendrick Motorsports
THE RACE LAST WEEK CAME DOWN TO TWO OR FOUR TIRES. HOW DO YOU AND YOUR CREW CHIEF DECIDE WHETHER TO TAKE TWO OR FOUR TIRES?
“Sometimes Alan might ask me or sometimes I might make a suggestion. Or he makes the call and I don’t question it. It’s kind of a two-way street when you are working these races because you try to bring your perspective and put that together with the crew chief’s perspective as well.”
DOES IT GO THROUGH YOUR MIND THAT YOU ARE GAMBLING OR PLAYING IT SAFE?
“Yes, either gambling or risky, no risk………..everything you do has a certain degree of risk to it but you have to weigh out what the trade-offs are. You know, how much do you risk putting cars in front of you with two tires, and you taking four.
“Certainly that is a risk. It makes your car better or taking two and not having the best car and having cars behind you with four on. There is a certain amount of risk to that as well. So we are just racing and we do what we think will do the best for us.”
IT SEEMS AS THIS CHASE GOES ON YOU HAVE DEVELOPED A GOOD RHYTHM AND ITS SHOWING
“Well its three races and we would like to keep it going. You know the team and I are really focused on the racing and not so much focused on……….what the reality is, the racing decides. We’ve gotten better as the season has gone along so we have been working together and have gotten some of the things going that we didn’t have. We had maybe an extraordinary amount of things that kind of plagued us or got us and those things have settled down now. And if we have seven more races of where we don’t have any of that, I have a lot of confidence in the performance of this race team and see how it works out. Right now we are not really focused on all of that down the road, we are focused on the racing and going to let the racing decide.”
MARK ARE YOU A BETTER DRIVER NOW THAN YOU WERE IN YOUR 30’s?
“In some ways.”
IN WHAT WAYS?
“I couldn’t tell you that.”
MORE EXPERIENCED PROBABLY?
“Sure. I have done more things wrong when I was in my 30s and that has a tendency to shape who you are and how you drive.”
ON THE CHANGE OF THE DATE AT CALIFORNIA AND HOW THAT AND THE WEATHER WILL MAKE THIS RACE PLAY OUT DIFFERENTLY
“I don’t know if I was out here last year, and I am sure I wasn’t out here the year before. So I missed that really hot one. I heard all about it. I don’t know, I don’t think I have been out here the last couple years for this race.”
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR FIRST CUP START ABOUT WHEN AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT?
“Well I built my own car…….my guys and I……our short track car that we raced in ASA and all the Late Model short tracks around. We put a car together and took it to North Wilkesboro and did our first race.”
HOW DID IT GO?
“We qualified 6th and they started the race with it sprinkling and I was freaked out about that because it was yellow and green and I had never experienced that before so I didn’t turn…………I don’t know why I had never had a rear end cooler before and to me we weren’t really racing so I didn’t turn it on so when they did go green, I burned the rear end up. So, one of those days.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHEN YOU HAD THAT START, THAT YOU WOULD HAVE THIS KIND OF CAREER AND BE RACING THIS MANY YEARS LATER?
“Of course not. It was just a real thrill to be on the racetrack with Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough and Darryl Waltrip, Bobby Allison and all those guys.”
ABOUT YOUR WIFE ARLENE AND HER ROLE BACK AT HOME AND WITH YOU IN THE CHASE
“You know, especially since I started driving the five car I leave 80% of the racing there and don’t bring it into the house and I definitely don’t bring the disappointments or problems that we might experience into the home. And that has worked really well. We have shared all the excitement and enthusiasm together for all the good things that have happened and she is my partner for twenty-five years and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if she hadn’t took me to raise back in 1984.”
