If he hadn't been a race car driver and then a team owner, Chip Ganassi would likely have made a great teacher.

The Pittsburgh native has not only been one of the best in the business when it comes to finding young talent, he's also been able to mold those up-and-coming drivers into eventual champions.

He did it in CART with Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya -- in consecutive years from 1995 through '98 -- and has been attempting to work the same magic since joining the Winston Cup circuit in 2000, when he purchased an 80 percent interest of Felix Sabates' team.

"When I decided to go into Winston Cup, I had to come to grips with myself, putting the pieces of the puzzle together," Ganassi said. "There's a lot (that) people don't see about putting these teams together. I've said this before. There's a lot of victories in race teams that don't make the Monday morning papers or Sunday night talk shows."

Ganassi almost saw his Midas touch turn the trick again last season, when veteran Sterling Marlin led the standings for 25 of the first 26 weeks, only to have his season end seven weeks premature when he suffered an injury in a crash at Kansas. Had that not occurred, Marlin and Ganassi were poised to make a run to not only regain the points lead, but potentially beat Tony Stewart to the title.

This season has been a much different story for Ganassi. Marlin struggled early, but has rebounded of late, currently sitting 10th as the series prepares for this weekend's running of The Winston at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

And then there are rookies Jamie McMurray and Casey Mears, both who came into the 2003 season with noteworthy credentials. McMurray won in his second career Cup start in place of Marlin (at Charlotte) and qualified in the top-five in four of his five races late last season. Mears, meanwhile, has the high-revving genes of father Roger, a former racer, and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner and uncle Rick Mears.

A great deal of promise was expected from the M&M boys, but thus far they've failed to scratch the same kind of surface that Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson did in their rookie seasons.

	Ganassi is looking for his first Winston Cup championship.

McMurray has had 11 starts behind the wheel of the No. 42 Dodge, with a pair of fifth-place finishes and one other top-10 thus far. He's also qualified in the top-10 just once (seventh at Rockingham, N.C.). On the flip side, he has three DNFs.

Conversely, while his qualifying efforts have picked up in three of the last four races (10th at Talladega, 11th at Richmond and 17th at California), Mears has just one top-20 finish this season (15th at Las Vegas) and one other top-25 showing (23rd at Atlanta) in the No. 41 Dodge.

Still, Ganassi is not panicking. He knows it's not just McMurray and Mears. In fact, the other full-time rookies in the series have done little but struggle. Consider the facts: Last year's Busch champ Greg Biffle is leading the Winston Cup rookie crop, but is only 21st, certainly nowhere near the earth-shattering accomplishments that Johnson and Newman achieved last season.

Then comes McMurray in 24th, Mears in 37th, Jack Sprague in 40th, Tony Raines in 41st and Larry Foyt in 42nd.

"So many times the point standings are not reflective of the job you're doing," Ganassi said. "I think that's certainly the case for Casey. We're certainly happy with the job he's doing. Jamie could have had a couple of top fives the last couple of weeks and it was all for naught with different challenges at the end of the races.

"At Fontana, Jimmie Johnson slammed into him and drove up in front of him and took his front fender off. We had engine problems at Richmond. That's kind of the beginning of our season. I guess we seemed to have swallowed the streak all right. I think we're digesting it, and it doesn't seem to be giving us any indigestion at the moment."

Yet as rough as it has been at points thus far in 2003 for Ganassi's team, the owner seems to secretly know that things are not just turning around, they're going to go in a much more positive direction.

"It was a challenge to get the season started this year," Ganassi said. "Daytona and getting into the season, you're sitting there with Jamie with no points to fall back on. You looked at Casey and you said, 'He's just learning his way around the series.' We had great cars for Sterling, but I want to say six out of the first eight races he was involved in some incidents where he was getting crashed or pushed up against the fence.

	"	That's kind of the beginning of our season. I guess we seemed to have swallowed the streak all right. I think we're digesting it, and it doesn't seem to be giving us any indigestion at the moment. "
		— Ganassi

"We thought we had pretty good cars for him, and we kept getting put out of races for one reason or another. We sort of have that righted to a certain extent. He's in the top-10 finally in points. Jamie and Casey are coming along great. Jamie obviously has a little more experience than Casey, but I couldn't be happier with the job those guys are doing."

And while three Cup teams makes for a pretty full plate for Ganassi, he's not ruling out the possibility of further expansion.

"I think our team has done a great job of going from two cars to three cars," Ganassi said. "Currently I don't see us going to four cars. I think we have the management in place and the infrastructure in place to do that. Is it going to happen tomorrow? The answer is no, but it's not out of the question in the future."

While Marlin is doing better and McMurray and Mears are slowly developing, Ganassi has challenges of his own. He and Roger Penske are the only team owners to have full-time operations in both NASCAR as well as either the CART or the IRL, making for some long, grueling days.

Still, Ganassi, who turns 45 on May 24, would love nothing more than to have a belated birthday celebration the next day at the Indy 500 with Scott Dixon or Tomas Scheckter, or later that night at Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600 with either Marlin, McMurray or Mears.

Or both, for that matter, he says.

"I was telling someone the other day, I feel real good about our chances at Indianapolis and I feel real good about our chances at Charlotte," Ganassi said. "I think we're more prepared for the 'double' this year than we have in the past. I'm certainly looking forward to Memorial Day."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at motorsportwriter@yahoo.com.