Mark Martin (left) with crew chief Ben Leslie Credit: Don Bok/ISC Photo
By Lee Montgomery, Turner Sports Interactive
March 2, 2003
7:04 PM EST (0004 GMT)
LAS VEGAS - There had been no driver any better than Mark Martin at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Of course, that's past tense.
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Martin, the only driver to finish in the top 10 in each of the previous five Winston Cup races at Las Vegas, apparently blew an engine on lap 116 of Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400.
"We lost a bearing or broke a rod or crankshaft," Martin said. "It just went all at once. ... We got lucky last year and didn't break a lot of engines. Maybe we'll get lucky this year and only have one."
Martin won the first Cup race at Vegas in 1998 and was second to Jeff Burton in laps led. The Roush Racing driver had completed all 1,216 laps at the 1.5-mile track, but he finished last in Sunday's race. He had a poor run going as it was, running outside the top 25.
"Well, we sure would have liked to have been running better, but we're a great race team, and we were wrestling as hard as we could go," Martin said. "We were in the process of making the best day out of it that we could."
Martin took a hit in the points standings, too. He came to Las Vegas fourth but left 11th, falling 121 out of the lead.
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