| | Associated Press
DOVER, Del. -- It took Mark Martin 15 years to learn how to win at Dover Downs International Speedway.
Now the rest of the field is trying to find a way to beat him come the fall. Nobody has since 1996.
Only this time Martin might be even more determined than he was
when he won the MBNA.com 400 the last three years.
"We still have yet to win a pole this year," said Martin, who will go after it in qualifying Friday. "I really think we have a good chance."
And he's talking no chances. He'll drive the Ford in which he won this race the last two years, hoping it's good enough Sunday to give him his second victory of the season.
"We'd be crazy not to bring it back," said the 41-year-old driver from Batesville, Ark., who had the pole for the race in 1997 and 1998. "We've had it in the fab shop to update it a little bit."
The plan this weekend is to unload the car from his hauler, be fast from the start and let the others try to catch him.
Unlike most drivers, Martin has been very successful at challenging The Monster Mile, one of the three most difficult tracks on the NASCAR circuit. He's been in the top five in half of his 28 races on this track.
"I've always liked Dover," Martin said. "Not a lot of people can say that."
Tony Stewart can. In just three starts at Dover, he has finished
fourth, second and first.
"There are some tracks where I struggle," said Stewart, a three-time winner this year. "So, we need to take advantage of tracks like Dover, where this team does run well."
Stewart's Pontiac was one of the dominant cars in his Dover debut 15 months ago, but he was among those who had to make a late-race fuel stop and settled for fourth when Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Bobby Labonte stretched his gas to the end and won despite being outrun.
Stewart finished second last September to Martin, then returned with a vengeance in June and took the MBNA Platinum 400. He led 242 of 400 laps.
"I was surprised that we were as dominant as we were," Stewart said. "I had a feeling we were going to be good when we got there, just from the past runs, but I don't think we anticipated being as dominant as we were."
But that doesn't mean Stewart expects a repeat performance. He
knows a driver can't assume anything at Dover.
"The biggest thing is the fact that you're in the corners for
so long and you run so fast here," he said. "It just keeps
putting a lot of load on your body all day long. That's why Dover
is such a physically demanding race track."
So Stewart, winless in his eight races, couldn't be in a better
place to get going again.
"It's definitely important for us," he said. "We need to take
every one of the tracks where we feel we're strong and we need to
be able to capitalize on those days."
Although he's winless at Dover since 1994, when he got the last
of three straight victories on the track, Rusty Wallace should be
stout once more. He's the only four-time winner this season and the
runaway leader with eight poles.
And Wallace set the track qualifying record last September,
winning his third pole in the last five Dover races with a lap of
159.964 mph. He also had the pole three months ago, but a flat tire
did him in and he wound up 32nd.
"We were able to lead laps and had lap times as fast as anybody
out there," Wallace said. "Then we had that right front go
down."
Later, his engine faltered, and Wallace limped around on seven
cylinders. But he wasn't complaining as he began preparing for this
race.
"We were lucky to have kept that thing off the wall," he said.
Others who figure in the mix are four-time Dover winner Ricky
Rudd, three-time winner Jeff Gordon, points leader Labonte and
rookie leader Matt Kenseth.
Labonte, always a factor at Dover, holds a 168-point lead over
Jeff Burton. Burton finished first and Labonte second last Sunday
in New Hampshire.
Kenseth has won the Busch Series race each of the last two
Septembers, and will compete twice this weekend. He wound up fourth
in the Winston Cup race last fall -- one of his dress rehearsals for
this season -- and finished second to Stewart in June.
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