After slow start, Marlin seeks improvement

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Nobody's affecting voodoo, circling haulers or calling pow-wows, but there's not much satisfaction these days in Sterling Marlin's camp.

The team that dominated the first two-thirds of 2002 has yet to whimper in 2003. Marlin enters this week's Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington Raceway mired in 20th place in the Winston Cup standings.

Instead of being a hare, Marlin appears to be all tortoise.

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"Obviously, you're always concerned, but we're going to get back to the front," said Tony Glover, Marlin's team manager.

Right now, the No. 40 can only wave at it. A slow start combined with mechanical and human glitches have stymied, and it's not a comfortable situation.

"Just aggravating things," said Marlin, who qualified eighth Friday. "We're behind in two or three areas. Just gotta step it up."

Last March, Marlin arrived in Darlington as flashy as his silver paint scheme. He opened the season with four consecutive top-10 finishes -- an eighth at Daytona, a second at Rockingham, a win at Las Vegas and a ninth at Atlanta.

At Darlington, Marlin drove from worst to first, turning a back-of-the-field start due an engine change into his second win in three races.

This year, a black-flag penalty dropped him to a 17th-place finish in the Daytona 500. At Rockingham, he ran in the top five, but pit-road problems and a blown engine relegated him to 40th.

At Las Vegas, Marlin scored a season-high finish of eighth place. He says he's had a strong car each week, but he just hasn't had the luck or circumstances.

"Rockingham, we drove right up to second," Marlin said. "Had a lot of trouble in the pits, then the motor blew up. At Vegas we started 34th. Drove to third. Made a lap up under green. Had a car, we just couldn't capitalize on it."

Last week, he finished 14th, one long lap down.

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"We just got stomped at Atlanta," Marlin said.

"We're not going to sit here and say, 'Well, this time last year we were leading the points, and now we're 20th in points, and we're going to roll over,'" Glover said. "We're not going to do that. We're going to keep fighting."

Caveat No. 1: The abnormal end to Marlin's season last year is still a factor. After leading the points for 25 consecutive weeks, he fell to second following the fall race at New Hampshire in early September.

Two weeks later, he tumbled to fifth in the standings after a hard wreck at Kansas, but worse, a mid-week MRI revealed a fractured bone in his neck. So Marlin sat out the final seven races, yielding the wheel to new teammate Jamie McMurray.

That's the opposite of 2001, when a late surge propelled Marlin from fifth to third in the final standings. While McMurray performed admirably in relief last fall, notching his first Cup win, Marlin ultimately finished 18th, out of uniform.

"That was one of our goals last year throughout the winter prior to 2002 was try to keep the momentum that we finished the year on," Glover said of 2001. "Last year we finished the year with Sterling watching the last seven or eight on TV. As far as momentum, we didn't carry that through the winter, the same kind of momentum that we did in 2001, but we're going to be OK."

Caveat No. 2: Small things have mushroomed into a ball-and-chain, according to Marlin.

Nothing uncorrectable, but definitely nagging. One is his pit crew, which underwent change in the effort to assemble McMurray's team. Like everyone else in the Cup garage, Marlin would like a tick more speed.

"If you look at it and you find a 10th [of a second], it puts you right back to where you need to be," he said. "You'll be leading races and doing what you need to do."

	Credit: Autostock

"When you can string together some solid runs, then you can get back in contention to win," Glover said. "So that's what we gotta do."

Marlin says the new pit-crew members are acclimating, and they performed well at Atlanta. The No. 40's hierarchy, including Marlin, Glover and crew chief Lee McCall, aren't panickers or equipment-throwers.

All three possess imperturbable personalities and the patience to persevere, and Marlin knows a points surge can boost him this time of year.

Last week, he entered Atlanta 19th in the standings, with Jeff Gordon just behind him in 20th. Thanks to his 14th-place finish, Marlin dropped to 20th this week, while Gordon's second place -- and near win -- shot him all the way up to eighth.

"Get us a win here, and we'll be right back up there," Marlin said of Darlington.

"Come back and talk to us in about six weeks and see where we're at, OK?" Glover said.