So, when trouble hits home, you get the heck outta Dodge. But what happens when Dodge up and leaves you?

That's the conundrum that the Bill Davis Racing stable is working to solve. And while Davis' No. 22 squad put forth quite a positive solution with last weekend's strong performance at Pocono, the realistic, season-long answer might unfortunately have something to do with settling for a little less.

"Frankie and I know the deal, we don't expect to run in the top five every week, but we need to run in the top 15," driver Ward Burton said of his and his crew chief Frankie Stoddard's approach to the rest of the year. "That's where we are right now as a team and as long as we all know that and we are all working to make it better in the long run, we won't get frustrated."

Not getting frustrated would be a heck of an accomplishment on its own. A couple of weeks ago, Dodge announced that it would be pulling all resources from Bill Davis' two-car Winston Cup stable, which also includes the car driven by Kenny Wallace, because it believes the team was using resources to help another manufacturer.

Dodge said that Davis was assisting Toyota in its entrance into the Craftsman Truck Series and is suing Davis for a breach of contract. Davis said in a release that he "is surprised by the decision" and that he "firmly believes that (the team) has not breached the Daimler Chrysler agreement and that there is no justifiable reason for Daimler Chrysler asserting a claim that it has breached such an agreement."

Toyota's top man in motorsports, Les Unger, said Davis was not giving away information or secrets, but merely lending Toyota a group of contracted employees to help build trucks with which to compete next season.

The dispute will be settled in a court room, but Burton and Wallace's issues will need to be settled on the race track -- which can be a far less friendly place when you've lost shared info from more than a half dozen other teams, as well as money and access to a wind tunnel.

"We're not going to set our expectations too high, we're just going to keep working on rebuilding the team and making us more consistent every week," Burton said. "We'll work to get the car decent enough and get the aero and handling good enough to have a solid run and that will produce a good race for us."

	Ward Burton, right, doesn't have as much to smile about these days.

For Burton, that plan is 1-for-2, so far. In the first race after learning of Dodge's decision -- the Dover race two weekends ago -- Burton suffered a mechanical failure that relegated him to a 37th-place finish. Wallace finished 23rd, which is slightly above average for his season as he is 28th in the points standings.

Last weekend at Pocono, Wallace finished 29th while Burton surprised many with an eighth-place effort.

"We need to go to Michigan and do the same things we've been doing the past several weeks," Burton said. "With the exception of Dover, when we had the heat exchanger fail, we've been running very competitively and getting the finishes we need. We've put together a string of consistent, strong runs since Richmond. We need to continue what we've been doing, getting the car to handle good, not having equipment failures and not wrecking and we'll build our way back to where we need to be."

Burton has climbed five spots in the standings to 20th.

Wallace, who hasn't been having the best luck or best runs this year, was hit as hard as Davis and Burton when he heard that Dodge was pulling its support. Wallace had just gotten over a couple of bad choices that bit him. In 2001, he left his ride with Andy Petree Racing to go with Eel River Racing.

It was a hastily put together team that he joined, one which folded not to far into the season. Once he lost that ride, he was relegated to backup duties for an injured Steve Park. With strong Dale Earnhardt Inc. equipment under his hood, Wallace one top-five and one top-10 in 12 races.

The next year offered another season of musical chairs, with Wallace racing 21 events for six different teams.

It was the team he ran most of those races for -- Davis' -- that hooked him up for this season. And, indeed, Wallace believed it to be the hook up. He called it the best ride he'd had in years. But that was with Dodge behind him. Now, he's just hoping to do well enough to ride out the storm.

"Things are a lot tougher all of a sudden," he said.

Davis is confident that he'll be able to convince a court that he hasn't done anything wrong. But that confidence still gives way to anger and sadness over the fact that, no matter what happens with the trial, his teams stand to suffer big time while it races its Dodge Intrepid chassis with no official support from Dodge.

"Everybody's been upbeat," Stoddard said. "We had a fantastic run last weekend that I think will give everybody some confidence. We can still put together some strong runs with all of this going on, but we also can't be too hard on ourselves when things don't go our way. We're in a tough situation, but everybody's in it together."

Rupen Fofaria covers NASCAR for The Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rups@theraces.com.