Dover, Del. — Following the lead of teammate and race-winner Greg Biffle, Mark Martin finished third in today’s MBNA RacePoints 400 at Dover International Speedway. The finish was Martin’s sixth top-10 of the year and helped advance him six positions to sixth in the driver standings.

Joining Biffle and Martin in the top 10 were fellow Roush Racing pilots, Matt Kenseth, who earned a season-best seventh-place finish, and Kurt Busch who place ninth. Robert Yates Racing driver Elliott Sadler closed out the top 10.

Sadler ran strong throughout the race and even led 128 laps. He looked poised for a top-five finish until losing power steering in the closing laps and lost a few positions. Fortunately, Sadler was able to muscle the car in to a 10-place finish. With the finish, Sadler maintains his third-place position in the standings.

MARK MARTIN, NO. 6 VIAGRA TAURUS (FINISHED THIRD)
IT ALMOST LOOKED LIKE LAST YEAR FOR YOU.
"Yeah, our guys did an awesome job with the car. It was off a little bit at the start and we got it really, really good through the middle of the race and I really thought that we are on track to contend to win, and then late in the race we started having a push that we couldn't get out of the car, and it looked like Biffle and his guys hit it right on the money and they just put a whippin' on us."

HOW DID THE HEAT AFFECT YOU TODAY?
"We used to do 500 here. So, this used to be a tough race. But I do want to say one thing: That was good, old-school racing. The best man won, and that's the way racing should be. I really enjoyed that race today. Green-flag racing, plenty of it. The guys who had the best cars were able to go to the front and stay in the front and the guys who made the best adjustments in the last 200 laps or 150 laps really are the ones that won the race, because up until that point Biffle was behind me. So those guys hit it on the money and we didn't."

YOU MENTIONED THIS WAS GOOD OLD-SCHOOL RACING. HOW CAN ALL RACING BE THAT WAY?
"You have to start with the race track. You can't make it more difficult for us than normal. We had more difficult than normal circumstances last week, and we weren't successful, we hadn't been successful most of the year with good conditions, so certainly we were going to have a failure last week. But it really is the drivers. The problem is that, and Kyle [Busch] worked awesome out there with me today, there are not very many newcomers - I'm not even going to use the age thing - I'm just saying there's not that many newcomers that really get the hang of how to run these long races and so they fight tooth-and-nail and they won't let people get by them. So you have to over-extend yourself to pass 'em and there's the wreck. Whereas just as Kyle and I raced throughout the day when he was faster than me I let him go and when I caught him and got all over him he let me go, and we didn't jeopardize our cars or our finishes by being hard-headed. So the drivers are a lot to blame for all the cautions, but there's pressure on these guys, enormous pressure. Why do you think this is my last year?"

ON TONY STEWART APPARENTLY SAYING THAT MARK MARTIN SHOULD START ON A SCHOOL ON HOW TO DRIVE RESEPECTFULLY.
"I do make mistakes, too. But, and I'm not sure Jeff Gordon needs to attend one of my seminars, but I do think that Tony Stewart ought to hold court and teach some of these young guys how to give the older guys that have been there the respect that they have coming. You've got some that do and you've got some that don't, and that doesn't mix and that's what happens on the race track. And that all gets back to when someone's faster than someone else and it's 100 laps in or 10 laps in or 300 laps in, you can do one of two things. Man, we used to fix these things ourselves. And we used to get fired if we wrecked 'em. You'd wreck one about four, five, six times and you're out of a ride. That's not like that anymore. You can wreck 'em every week and it seems like you can keep your job. So there's a lot of reasons why we have accidents today and I can't bash 'em all. I'm under pressure, too. I wrecked a lot of cars the year before last, too, because my car ran in the middle of the pack and it's wild back there and you have to race really hard. If you race for 25th, I don't care who you are, you're going to get tore up a lot more than if you race in the top 10."

WE HAVEN'T SEEN A LOT OF GREEN-FLAG PIT STOPS THIS SEASON, BUT THIS RACE DOWN TO THAT.
"My comment is, 'Thank God.' That's old-school racing. That's what it's all about. Then when you do that, usually the best man wins. It doesn't always work out that way when you have 15 or 20 cautions."

CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE SEASON THAT GREG BIFFLE AND HIS TEAM ARE HAVING?
"Well, they're just spectacular. The guys have just really, really hit on something about half or two-thirds of the way through the season last year. It's just the little things. Like I say, I thought at lap 225 today or maybe 250, I thought, certainly at 225, I didn't think I would have to beat him to win the race, but those guys got it back together and got it wired in. They're on a roll right now. They're making the cars go fast, and he always drove the fool out of 'em, but now the cars are working for him and they're pitting it well and doing everything right."

CAN YOU COMMENT ON GREG'S FOUR WINS THIS YEAR, AND HAS THAT SUCCESS COME OUT OF NOWHERE?
"Greg's four wins this season have not come out of nowhere, they dominated the end of the season last year with speed, maybe not with wins, but definitely with speed. They've been gaining momentum since mid-season last year. They're on it, man. That's how it goes in this business."

MATT KENSETH, NO. 17 DEWALT POWER TOOLS TAURUS (FINISHED SEVENTH)
"It's OK. It's better than things have been going, for sure. We ran close to the top five and then the second-to-last run we just got so loose and lost all our ground. Seventh is all right, but I still think we can do a lot better than that, so I'm still disappointed. Greg won the race, Mark run third, we couldn't run with those guys, so we're going to keep working on it.

YOU DON'T SEEM TO HAVE BEEN BOTHERED BY THE HOT WEATHER. HOW WAS IT OUT THERE?
"Well, it's the first hot day we've had in a long time and it was definitely real hard inside the car. It's been cool all weekend, you come up here wearing sweatshirts, 60 degrees, and it just shows up and it's 85 all of a sudden on race day, usually everybody's not ready for it, so the first couple of warm races are usually tougher than the rest."

ELLIOTT SADLER, NO. 38 M&M’S TAURUS (FINISHED 10TH)
"My guys gave me a race car. For the first 250 laps of the race, we were the car to beat. Just the driver didn't keep up with the changes enough. I had no idea the track would get that tight in the last 150 laps, and I didn't give them the right feedback. But they gave me a great car. I think our intermediate program is coming around. Today was a big statement, I think, on where we're going. The driver's just got to get a little bit better at some of these places about where the track's going, and I kept up with it for 250 laps, but I lost it there that last run, and of course that was the longest run of the day. And even lost power steering the last 30, 40 laps, and that just wore me out. Dover's a tough place anyway, and you lose power steering, it was a tough day."

IT APPEARED THAT THERE WAS SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE BACK OF YOUR CAR TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE.
"Yeah, the power steering fluid was leaking. That finally leaked all the way out and made it tough to drive. But we got a top-10. It could've been a lot worse. The main thing is we run good, and we made a statement, I think, on these intermediate tracks. We struggled at Atlanta, we struggled at Texas, we went to Charlotte All-Star race and run really good, we had an awesome car in the 600 and then came here and run good, a place we don't have a good history, so this team is doing a great, great job."

YOU'VE MENTIONED BEFORE THAT THIS YEAR EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T GET THE FINISH YOU WANT, IT'S STILL NOT A BAD DAY. DOES THIS FINISH FALL INTO THAT CATEGORY?
"Yeah. I wanted a top-five bad or just run for the win, but like I said before, it's a great finish for the problems we had at the end of the race. I just got to work a little harder as a driver about the way the track's going. I'm still a student of the game at that, and keep working at it."

RICKY RUDD, NO. 21 MOTORCRAFT GENUINE PARTS TAURUS (FINISHED 40TH)
ARE YOU OK?
"Yeah."

WAS THERE ANY ROOM THERE AT ALL?
"I don't know. I got on the brakes. I don't know who it was drilled me, nailed me in back end and sent me into it. It wasn't a big deal. I don't know what they were doing behind me. I don't know why they didn't slow up. Everybody else slowed up and stopped, and somebody didn't stop and run over the back of me."

YOU'VE LOOKED AT THE DAMAGE. CAN THE TEAM GET THIS CAR BACK IN THE RACE?
"No, I don't think so. Not as hard as I hit. Usually that's a good indicator. I don't think it'll be back. We'll see."