Battling his way to a fifth place finish, Mark Martin unleashed his third top-5 effort of the 2008 season.

Not hesitating to direct credit to his pit crew, Martin declared, “This was a great effort by this U.S. Army team. We had poor track position most of the day and then got behind on a bad pit stop. But these guys just dug in and we fought back for a top-five."

“It would have been easy to let that ruin our day,” Martin shared. “But this is the Army team. When things aren't going our way, we fight harder and never give up. This is just an incredible race team. Tony Gibson (crew chief) and the guys just went to work trying to figure out how to get us back up front and they came up with a solid strategy that really paid off.”

Due to Mother Nature's daughter, Tropical Storm Hanna, qualifying was cancelled and the field was set according to the 2008 owner's points, forcing Martin to start in the 17th position.

From there, he was somehow able to navigate the No. 8 U.S. Army Chevrolet through traffic and make his way up the field noting that the car seemed to struggle making passes.

Martin revealed that had qualifying not been cancelled he may have been rewarded a higher starting position, putting the DEI team in a better position to possibly collect a victory.

“We had a really good Chevy Impala SS today, but it was hard to pass in all the traffic,” Martin noted. “Qualifying getting rained out on Friday hurt us, as we would have probably started closer to the front and had a lot less traffic to deal with.”

Surrendering the wheel to co-driver Aric Almirola at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Martin will retake the driver's seat the following weekend at Dover.