Spencer

When Jimmy Spencer was unceremoniously dumped from Team Ganassi after last season, he was bound and determined to find a new team and turn a dismal 2002 into a smashing success in 2003.

Well, he got the smashing part of that right.

In nearly half of his first 11 starts this season driving the No. 7 Dodge for team owner Jim Smith and Ultra Motorsports, Spencer has looked more like a demolition derby driver rather than a Winston Cup pilot, failing to finish five races because of crashes.

He recorded DNFs at Daytona (finished 94 of the rain-shortened 109 laps), Darlington (291 of 293 laps), Texas (294 of 334 laps), Talladega (only nine of 188 laps) and Richmond (139 of 393 laps). He also crashed at Las Vegas but managed to continue racing.

But that all was before Sunday's rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in suburban Charlotte. In a season that couldn't get much worse, Spencer reached back into his veteran bag of tricks at LMS and pulled out his best showing of the season, a fourth-place finish.

That end result could be just the thing Spencer and the rest of the No. 7 team need to get away from the smashing part of things and build upon their hopes for success that they sought heading into this season.

"In order to win races and in order to run up front, you've got to have luck," Spencer said. "You can make your luck, but when you have good fortune things happen. I think it did happen for us Sunday.

"The pit stops were phenomenal. Everything was falling in place. To come out of there with a top-five finish, I think that was a big step in the right direction for the team, me included. It's a sign of better things for us."

Crew chief Tommy Baldwin couldn't agree more.

"Finally on Sunday night we put it all together and finished right about where we've been running all year long," Baldwin said.

Where he's been running and where he's wound up weren't necessarily the same thing for Spencer because of the thing fans look at the most: the end result. While he has indeed been competitive in most races, the multitude of crashes he's been involved in -- most not of his doing -- have taken away from the good performances he has had, even in the races where he has eventually crashed out.

	Spencer's season hasn't always been moving in the right direction.

Besides Sunday's outstanding finish, Spencer has had several other notable highlights this season that have kind of been lost in the saga of wrecks he's endured. Among those: one other top-10 finish (seventh at Atlanta), plus three starts in the top-seven. Spencer has also notched six top-21 finishes.

If it hadn't been for the bad luck he's suffered through, Spencer most certainly would be much higher in the standings than he is now, currently 28th heading into Sunday's MBNA America 400 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. It would not be out of the realm of possibility to think Spencer could easily be in or near the top-15 in the Winston Cup standings today had it not been for all of those untimely wrecks.

"Every time we've had a problem we've been 13th or better all year long, every single race," Baldwin said. "We got up to 13th at Rockingham and had a motor go bad and not anybody knew we finished. We got up to seventh at Vegas and got in that wreck in Turn 2 (but managed to continue racing). At Atlanta, we finished seventh. At Darlington we were running seventh and (Mike) Skinner got into us and put us in the wall. At Bristol we were leading and the caution came out while we were pitting and put us a lap down. At Texas we were 13th with an oil leak. At Martinsville we were fourth and created our own problems with the gas can (stuck in the car). It goes on.

"At California we had pit stop problems running 13th. At Richmond we were running fifth. We've just got to learn to do what we did Sunday night every week. I think we're heading in the right direction."

While some critics questioned the pairing of Baldwin and Spencer when it was first announced, bringing the duo together could wind up being one of the best things Smith has ever done as a Winston Cup owner -- and with the promise of potentially many great things still to come.

"I think Tommy and I really get along great," Spencer said. "The most important thing is the driver has to trust that crew chief. Tommy and I've got that and it's really working good. We're having a good time, and we're going to win. I know where the winner's circle is. I've won in the Busch Series lately, but I haven't won in Winston Cup in a long time (last win was fall 1994 at Talladega). I think we can do it this year."

Despite the struggles he's endured thus far in 2003, Spencer still exudes a confidence that things will be better the rest of this season. He says he'll gladly forget about the bad first-third of the season if it means greater success in the last two-thirds of the campaign.

"I feel confident that my team is confident now," Spencer said. "Finally all this work (paid off). Tommy has been working them hard. Everybody in the shop has been working hard for this and we did it at Charlotte and that's so cool because most of the guys in the shop are there. After all the hard work, we can see (success) is going to happen now, so that's the biggest incentive the crew can have, that all their hard work is paying off. It'll be a step in the right direction going into Dover and on into Pocono."

Baldwin, who has basically rebuilt the one-car team from scratch since joining it last November, can also see more finishes like the team had at Charlotte on the near horizon.

"I think we have a couple of other opportunities to win some races this year," Baldwin said. "I think the ingredients are here. I think we just have to capitalize on the situation.

"At the Cup level, 20 race teams are running in the top-20 on a weekly basis. To get there is hard. To stay there is even harder. We have to attack every weekend like it's our last and go for it.

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@Yahoo.com.