How dominant has Roush Racing been at Phoenix International Raceway? Well, on Sunday, Roush placed four drivers among the top 10 -- and that's a down year for the team.

A Roush driver won each of the last three Cup races at Phoenix before this weekend. Last year, four Roush drivers placed among the top 12. The year before, there were two among the top five. In 2000, there were two among the top six and the two years before that there were two among the top four.

And though Roush's winning streak was cut at three, whatever secrets the team has for the one-mile Arizona track didn't go to waste on Sunday.

Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth, a couple of racers who had struggled the last couple of weeks, finished fourth and sixth, respectively. Jeff Burton, who blew a tire midway through the race, came back and finished eighth. And Mark Martin, coming off a couple of top-five finishes the past two weeks, finished 10th.

In fact, no win was no worry for team owner Jack Roush. His banner day was punctuated well enough by Kenseth's sixth-place effort. With that finish, the points leader is 228 points ahead of Phoenix winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the standings and Jack Roush's first Winston Cup title is nearly locked up.

"I couldn't be happier," Kenseth said. "We ran competitively all day. We had a car that maybe couldn't have won, but if we would have been up front, I think we would have been tough to beat. We haven't run as good the last few weeks and it feels good to come out and run competitively and at least have a car that if it was in the right position would have a shot to win. It was real competitive all day, so it feels real good."

It had been a long time since Kenseth was competitive all day. In the five races before Phoenix, Kenseth posted just one top-10 and finished outside the top 30 twice. Still, the team kept its composure and, comforted by its large padding in the standings, focused on closing out the year.

"It really hasn't been that frustrating," Kenseth said of his team's hiccups the past few weeks. "Yeah, you want to run up front every week, but this is a very competitive sport and that's tough to do each and every week, so I was happy to come back here and be competitive again. I feel great going to (North Carolina Speedway at) Rockingham. We've had great cars there in the past and I look forward to going there next week and hopefully have a shot to win."

Thanks to his sixth-place effort this weekend, Kenseth need only finish among the top 30 in the season's last two races and he'll seal the deal. With the trophy so close, he admits that he's starting to think about it and feeling less pressure.

"I'm pretty excited now that we're out of here," Kenseth said. "We've got two races to go. ... Unless we break stuff or crash, I think it's real attainable, so I feel good about that. Obviously, it's not over until it's over, but I feel great about where we're at with two races to go.

	Once again, Kenseth managed to avoid on-track trouble.

"I'll probably think about it a little bit more this week just because we did get out of here with a good finish and there are only two races to go and we have a real healthy lead. I feel great about it right now. It can never be enough, but I feel good about it."

Meanwhile, as Kenseth wraps up this year's championship, his teammates are building for the future, gaining momentum they hope will follow them into 2004 and, hopefully, help them make a run for their own title.

Among them is Busch. He set a torrid pace at the end of 2002 to finish third and raise expectations for this year. And though it has not been the title-contending season he was hoping for, he says the team has shown flashes of what it needs to eventually claim a title.

"Yeah, each week it just seems like we're behind the eight ball and all the bad breaks keep going against us," he said. "Each week something else is happening and now we're able to overcome it. I enjoy coming out west. This Phoenix mile has been good to me, so it's a good finish and we led some laps. ... Our results are starting to turn around a little bit."

Speaking of turnarounds, none was better on Sunday than Burton's. The driver of the No. 99 Ford blew a tire, had a pit mishap and an altercation with another driver -- losing track position after each incident. But Burton knows how to get around the Phoenix race track. He nabbed Roush two of the three Phoenix victories from 2000-2002, and he drove a winner's race just to finish eighth.

"I leave here pretty happy," Burton said. "We were fast. We raced hard and when we weren't good at all, we just kept adjusting and ended up making our car really fast. We just didn't have any good fortune. We cut a tire and had to go to the back. We came in the pits and it shut off and I couldn't get it started, so I had to go to the back. Robby Gordon ran me up in the wall and I had to go to the back. I went to the back three times and finished eighth, so you've got to be happy."

Martin left a happy man, too. His team used pit strategy to finish 10th, although the driver of the No. 6 Ford believes he had a shot at a top five if the cautions would have fallen differently.

"(Crew chief) Ben (Leslie) had some great pit strategy and we had a good enough car to stay out like that," Martin said. "The car was awesome on that last long run. If it would have gone green all the way, we would have had a top-five easily because nobody was coming at all. I was real happy with that. ... I'm real proud of our team and proud of our car. It was more competitive today than we have been."

Even the Roush Racing rookie, Greg Biffle, got in on the action. He posted a 15th-place finish -- one of only nine top-15s for him this year.

"My car started out really awesome," he said. "I had a chance to win today for sure. I was wrestling my teammate trying to get by him and got in the wall pretty hard coming off turn two. That knocked the rear end over and knocked the front fender in. I'm sure it knocked the camber out of it -- the toe -- and I just tried to salvage what I could."

Rupen Fofaria is a freelance writer living in Chicago and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rfofaria@espnspecial.com.