Pepsi 400 - Mark Martin Notes

MARK MARTIN FAST FACTS
Pepsi 400, July 2, 2005 RACE 17
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
(2.5 – MILE, 160 LAPS)

MARTIN RETURNS HOME FOR ONE MORE RUN AT PEPSI 400
After a 15th-place run at Sonoma, Martin returns home to Daytona for the Pepsi 400, where he will make his 41st start at the famed Daytona International Speedway. Martin has finished sixth in his last two starts at the 2.5-mile speedway, where he will look for his first win in what is very likely his final points race at the track.

Chassis Number: (RK-235) - The team will run RK-235 this weekend at Daytona. RK-235 is the same car that Martin used to finish sixth earlier this year in the Daytona 500 and sixth last year in the Pepsi 400.

AT DAYTONA
Starts: 40 (19)
Wins: -
Top 5's: 9 (4)
Top 10's: 15 (7)
Poles: 1 (1)
Highest finish: 3rd (2/19/95
First time: 2/14/82 (30th)
Last time: 2/20/05 (20th)
7/3/04 (6th)

Worthy Note: Martin has finished top seven in five of his last seven at Daytona and sixth in his last two.

IN THE POINTS
Martin's fourth straight top-15 finish helped him maintain his fifth place position in the points and pull closer to first place. After 16 races Maritn is now 30 points out of fourth and 228 points behind first.

MARTIN AT DAYTONA
A native of Daytona Beach, this will be Martin's 41st start at the famed Daytona Int'l Speedway, where he has finished in the top six in five of his last seven starts. Martin finished sixth in his last two starts at Daytona, including earlier this year in the Daytona 500 and in last year's Pepsi 400. All-in-all Martin has nine top-five and 15 top-10 finishes at Daytona, incluing top 10 efforts in 15 of his last 27 starts there.

MARK MARTIN DAY IN DAYTONA
Martin, who has resided in Daytona since 1992, was given the key to the city on June 15. In addition the City of Daytona and Volusia county declared the day Mark Martin day in honor of one of its favorite residents.

UNRESTRICTED
Martin is one of just six drivers to have competed in all 70 restrictor-plate races. Martin's 34 top-10 finishes are the most of any driver at restricted races. He has finished in the top 10 in 49 percent of the restrictor-plate races ran in Nextel Cup.

MARKMARTINSALUTE.COM
Mark Martin is making his final run at the Nextel Cup title in 2005, and 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 DAYTONA
"Daytona International Speedway has really been the source of a lot of pain and a lot of heartaches for me over the years. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of restrictor plate racing in general, but we'll go there and roll the dice and hopefully come out on top. We've actually had some pretty good race cars there the past couple of years and we were able to finish sixth in the 500 earlier this year and sixth there last July, so hopefully we can keep that going and be able to avoid the wrecks and come out of there with a good finish and and good position in the points race. "We had a tough week at Sonoma last weekend, so we'll be looking to get that behind us. We are fifth in the points right now, so hopefully we can get through Daytona and still be in good shape heading to Chicago and Pocono, as this thing starts to approach the 26-race cut-off."

PAT TRYSON
"We'll be taking RK-235, which is the same car that we used to finish sixth there in the 500 in February and sixth last year in the 400, so we know we have a pretty good car to work with. Mark is one of the best in the draft, so we'll just hope to avoid the wrecks, stay around to the end and hopefully make a run at the thing."