Driving in Winston Cup is hard enough, and driving with a broken foot only compounds the difficulty.

But veteran driver Bill Elliott is doing his best to keep himself and the No. 9 Dodge going forward, even though his performance this season has been similar to the way he's been walking of late -- with a pronounced limp.

Since he broke three bones in his left foot in a crash during The Winston all-star race at Charlotte on May 17, Elliott has dipped from 19th to 23rd in the Winston Cup standings. Add his 20th-place showing at Richmond (Va.) before his wreck at The Winston, and Elliott has probably been in as much pain about his performance in the last three races -- finishes of 20th, 26th and 22nd -- as he has been with his ailing foot.

The frustration shows on the face of the man they call Awesome Bill from Dawsonville (Ga.). The red-haired, freckle-faced stock-car legend is enduring the worst season he's had since the woeful 1996 campaign, when he finished a career-low 30th (as a full-time driver) in the standings and missed five races after fracturing a thigh bone in a wicked crash at Talladega (Ala.).

	Bill Elliott, center, celebrates winning the pole at The Winston, but that has been the highlight of his season so far.

It's no wonder the 47-year-old Elliott has begun not only questioning why he's had such bad luck in the 2003 campaign, but has also started to talk once again about retirement, perhaps as early as at the end of this season if things continue to remain murky and dreadful.

"I've been very lucky, very fortunate to be where I'm at," Elliott said. "That's one thing I look at. There'll be time to reminisce when you go back and look at some of this stuff, but right now my focus is on getting better and getting this team back where it needs to be and trying to get Ray (team owner Ray Evernham) back where he needs to be. I think that's the thing that concerns me today. It has been a great career. I'm sure I haven't done as much as some, but one thing I'm so proud of when I look back is we kind of did it our way. We were kind of out here in the middle of nowhere and became competitive and won races."

When it comes to positives this season, there've been very few, just like the number of good finishes Elliott has earned in the first 13 races of the season. In fact, he's had just one top-five (4th at California) and one other top-10 finish (9th at Darlington, S.C.) this year. That's it.

On the flip side, Elliott has had four finishes of 32nd or lower this year, including back-to-back 32nd-place showings in the season-opening Daytona 500 and the following week at Rockingham (N.C.). He's failed to finish two other races, both due to engine problems (39th at Atlanta and 43rd at Texas).

Perhaps that's why Elliott feels he should get some kind of consideration for trying to race while being hampered by such a significant injury as a broken foot. He's used his left foot throughout his career as his braking foot while behind the wheel of a race car, and has been forced to brake with his right foot since his foot mishap, making for an unorthodox procedure for him.

"I have been able to right-foot brake in the past at some places, but it's not the normal way of what I'm looking for," Elliott said. "To have driven as long as I have and try to change all of a sudden, as competitive as things are today, you just can't up and change what you're doing in the middle of the stream. It's difficult to do."

Elliott would like to see NASCAR adopt some type of system where drivers who are injured -- and either miss races or drive with limited ability, as he is doing right now -- would get some special consideration in the points.

"I wish there was some sort of formula where you could throw out X number of races," Elliott says. "The rookie points fall under something similar to that. Why couldn't there be a formula to do that? Sterling (Marlin) was the same way last year.

"The problem is … if you look at the span of the last five years, look at how much faster we're running. We do wreck, and nine times out of 10 you are hurt in some way. You've got to be 110 percent to get in the race cars every Sunday or you're not competitive. If you're off half a tenth (of a second), that could be the difference between fifth or 25th or 35th. There ought to be some way to work around what we're trying to accomplish."

What makes things particularly worse for Elliott in this weekend's Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania is the fact he's had such outstanding success at the uniquely shaped 2.5-mile tri-oval.

Elliott is the all-time wins leader at Pocono with five (2 in 1985, plus single-season wins in 1988, 1989 and last summer, when he won from the pole for the 15th time in his storied career, the most of any active driver in Winston Cup today). He's also recorded five poles, 14 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes in 42 career starts there, and led a lap in half of those starts (21) for 425 total laps.

	"	Pocono is a very physical place, and we are looking at whether Bill will run the whole event on Sunday or not. ... Our big push is to make sure we get Bill healthy for the second half of the season. "
		—Team owner Ray Evernham, on Bill Elliott

That's why both Elliott and Evernham want to see the No. 9 car back in Victory Lane this Sunday and are doing everything they can to achieve that task, broken foot and all. Yet, at the same time and despite Elliott's past success at Pocono, Evernham doesn't want to mortgage the season for one race. If Elliott physically can't stay in the car for the full 500 grueling miles around Pocono's layout, former ARCA champ Frank Kimmel will be ready in the pits as a relief driver if needed.

"Pocono is a very physical place, and we are looking at whether Bill will run the whole event on Sunday or not," Evernham said. "We want him in shape for Michigan (next week) and some of the upcoming events. The two places coming up now he could struggle at are obviously Pocono and Sears Point (two weeks from now). Our big push is to make sure we get Bill healthy for the second half of the season."

Ironically, Elliott has been a conundrum of sorts in the last two years at Pocono. He finished 26th in last year's Pocono 500 and 27th in the 2001 race. But when the Winston Cup circuit returned back to the venerable racetrack less than two months later for its second race of each year, Elliott has shined in his last two starts, finishing 4th in 2001 and winning last year's event.

That's why, because of his foot injury, Elliott isn't taking anything to chance. He'll be driving the same car that he won with at Pocono last season, as well as a week later in his win at Indianapolis, plus in his first win since 1994 in the 2001 season finale at Homestead, Fla.

Three starts, three wins, same car. While he may have some bones rattling around in his foot, that streak is one thing Elliott doesn't want to break Sunday.

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