Labonte

LONG POND, Pa. -- We've all heard the story. Some of us have even retold it a few times.

The two-time Winston Cup champ who has fallen in points in each of the six seasons since his last title. The guy who is teamed with one of the best drivers in the history of the sport, four-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon.

There is the talk that Gordon and his protege Jimmie Johnson get all the best equipment while their teammates suffer. Or, there's no excuse not to perform while driving for one of the best teams in the biz. With that, maybe it's time to consider retirement.

Sunday's race took absolutely none of that into account.

Terry Labonte continued his solid 2003 campaign by notching his third top-five of the season -- a fifth-place finish in the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway. This after Labonte scored just one top-five in 2002.

"The car wasn't as good as it was in the first race here," said Labonte, who finished seventh in the Pocono 500 in June. "We made some adjustments. I've been awful proud of these guys. We're just so much better than we were last year."

Actually, Labonte wasn't all that bad for a while last season. The 46-year-old was 17th in the standings at this point of the '02 campaign. He sat 16th after last year's Brickyard 400 and remained there following the Watkins Glen road race.

But Labonte and his No. 5 team slumped to the finish, notching just one top-20 in the season's final 15 races and ending up 24th in points -- Labonte's worst finish since his pre-rookie five-race 1978 campaign.

Labonte is not expecting to encounter the same late-season struggles this time around.

"We've just got a so much better team this year than we had a year ago. The cars are so much better. The guys are doing a great job building our cars. We made some changes on our team. We've got a lot of the same people but it's a different team."

Labonte was as high as 13th in points following a fourth-place finish in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. But with just 224 points now separating seventh-place Kevin Harvick with 16th-place Mark Martin, losing spots in the points race is easy to do. For Labonte, all it took was a 15th at Chicagoland and a 20th at Loudon, N.H., to slip back to 16th in the standings.

	Labonte, left, and Long have had the No. 25 running well lately.

"We needed the points. We slipped a couple weeks in a row," said crew chief Jim Long. "When you really need the points trying to get into the top-10 by the end of the year and this will really help that. This will give us momentum going into Indy."

Labonte's top-five moved him back up to 13th, just one point behind Robby Gordon -- and just three points clear of Tony Stewart and five ahead of Sterling Marlin. And as close as that margin is, Labonte might have been even closer to running out of fuel before even finding the checkered flag on Sunday.

Was the 25 almost out of gas?

"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We didn't have much (fuel left)," laughed Labonte. "We needed those caution flag laps. If we wouldn't have had that we were probably going to run out."

Well-timed cautions -- sometimes good calls and great luck play a big role in determining whether a team goes home happy or in a wreck -- literally and figuratively. Beyond that, it's all about working toward the ultimate goal -- winning races.

"We just have to keep running like that and if you can continue to run like that and be consistent like that it makes it a lot easier to get one," said Labonte, whose last win came at home in Texas in 1999. "I think we're getting closer. If we can continue to be consistent, that's the key. And if we continue to (run) up in the top-five, you've got a shot at winning."

Labonte's rebirth hasn't been an overnight event. Rather, it's been an evolving process which has gained momentum as the 2003 season has lingered on. Still, the team -- points-wise, anyway -- isn't too far off from where they were last year at this point. But as Labonte attested to, this is by no means the same No. 25 team that saw a solid points finish in 2002 fade away as the season winded down. And because of that, these are not the same cars Labonte piloted last year.

"Our aero's gotten better. The guys in the chassis shop have been doing a really good job and my guys in the fab shop have been doing well," said Long, who is in second season with Labonte. "We looked at the chassis and the setups and the way we were approaching the shocks and the springs and all that. My engineer has done a remarkable job."

Long, who has two career wins as a crew chief -- both with Ricky Rudd in 1999 -- has seen his team's hard work and attention to detail pay off.

"We just research that stuff every week and go over it and over it and over it. And it's made life a lot easier," said Long. "Decisions about the pit crews have gotten better. Made a couple of changes there and that's for the good. I'd put them up against anybody on pit road. They're really good -- extremely good. Everyone's just getting better. The attitude's better. Everybody's pumped up.

"I'm pretty pleased with everything. The pit crew's doing a great job. The guys in the shop are doing good. We've got our act together. We're looking at things differently and it's paying off, it really is."

The payoff, obviously, is competing for a win and scoring a good finish. And that sort of performance comes from having a better car -- something which this team did not have in excess last year.

"I've got new chassis, but I think the aero's better for us," said Long. "I just think we've got better cars and more of them. Last year we had one or two that (Terry) really liked and a few that he didn't care for. Now I've probably got about six that he really likes. It gives us flexibility."

Consistency is the name of the game in NASCAR and Labonte himself is a poster boy for that notion. After all, Labonte won just two races in each of his championship seasons (1984, 1996). But consistent finishes and competing for wins are not mutually exclusive. And the more often Labonte and his No. 25 car can run up front, the better shot he has at finding Victory Lane.

"I think we're real close (to consistently finishing high and competing for wins)," said Long. "We need to make one more stride and maybe this was the week we did that. We need to get to fourth and third and when we do that I think we'll be in position to win a race."

It might have started -- or, more accurately, continued at Pocono on Sunday. But rather than foreseeing a late-season slump, this team feels like it's got plenty more to show.

"We got a new car for Indy that's better than this one here and we're looking forward to going to Indy," said Long. "I think we're making improvements all the time. Part of it's being in the right place at the right time, too. Luck and the way things play out."

This team is performing well -- and the crew knows it.

"Man, it's like we just started a week ago," said Long. "They're just pumped up day in and day out. I can't say enough about them. Guys in the shop ... all my road crew. They're doing an excellent job. Great job."

The other other guy

	Nemechek

While Jimmie Johnson finished 15th and Jeff Gordon crashed out, Hendrick driver Joe Nemechek joined Labonte in the top-10 with a seventh-place finish on Sunday -- his first top-10 since winning at Richmond in May.

And while Nemechek followed that victory with an 11th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 that moved him up to 11th in points, seven consecutive finishes of 21st or worse sent Nemechek spiraling to 25th in points heading into Pocono.

But that streak ended on Sunday with a seventh-place finish.

"The car was great. We had to take a seventh-place finish after having trouble on the track, knocking the nose in and having to bang it out," said Nemechek, who jumped up to 22nd in points as a result of Sunday's finish. "We overcame a lot today and I have to thank (crew chief) Peter Sospenzo and the guys. They made some good calls and we finally got back to where we should be."

Nemechek has actually been as high as ninth in points this season and had been no worse than 22nd (after the season-opening Daytona 500) until his recent slide. But Nemechek believes Sunday's finish -- and not the recent seven-race slump -- more accurately reflects the potential of his No. 25 team.

"We went from ninth in points to 25th because of bad luck, broken engines, crashes, bad calls, just a lot of things. I was a big part of that. Now, to rebound from that, it just shows what we're made of."

Being part of the Hendrick camp could pay more dividends in the future, as well.

"Yeah, they ran good. They ran real good. That was a good for us," Labonte said of his teammate's No. 25 crew. "You know, all of the teams really work good together. The 48 and the 24 work out of the same shop and I think there are plans in the works for the 5 and the 25 to be in the same shop, which will probably help both of us.

"But, yeah, it was a great run for us," said Labonte. "We're happy. We'll take it."