Labonte

Sometimes it's hard to see NASCAR as a team sport in the traditional sense of basketball, Major League Baseball or the NFL.

In those games, you look out and see five, nine or more players on the field for each team at any given time. In racing, you see one car on the track representing one sponsor, and you know there's only one driver behind the wheel.

But I'm here to tell you that the same things that make the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys tick are the same things that make my Winston Cup team tick: Talent, attitude and leadership.

Of course, everyone needs a little luck along the way, too, and I'll get to that a little later. But if you have the right mix of talented individuals, instill a positive attitude and have strong leadership, you will be successful. A perfect illustration of this was our experience in the third race of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Last year, our trip to Las Vegas resulted in one of the most frustrating weekends we endured all season. To make a long story short, we finished 38th and weren't competitive. We promised ourselves that we would be better when we went back out there this year and we were, finishing 16th.

But I was proud of the Kellogg's/got milk? team and Hendrick Motorsports for a bunch of other reasons besides the improved finish -- reasons that have to do with talent, attitude and leadership.

Rain forced us to sit out the first half of the day Friday. When it finally cleared, we had only half as much practice time as originally scheduled and then we had to qualify at night. Our car wasn't as fast as we would have liked it to be during practice and then we struggled in qualifying, starting 36th in the 43-car field.

But things only got better from that point on, starting with the talented team of Hendrick engineers who huddled together to prescribe a chassis setup felt would serve us well on race day.

You know what? The No. 5 Kellogg's/got milk? Chevrolet wound up in the top-10 on the speed chart during Saturday's final practice. This not only pleased the driver from a competition standpoint, it also made for a more positive visit to the hospitality suite before the race Sunday.

This brings us to attitude and leadership, both of which played huge roles in the improved race finish. With the No. 5 Monte Carlo running pretty well on the track, the crew needed to stay sharp on pit road. It did and then some, with our best series of stops in a long while that consistently gained positions in the running order ... two, three at a time.

But even then, the front-runners eventually put us a lap down. Ironically, I think that may have provided a spark for the team because the guys continued to work hard -- maybe even harder -- to get me in and out of the pits as quickly as they could. We continued to have great stops because those guys kept a great attitude, refusing to give an inch and instead battling even harder.

Constant "coaching" by crew chief Jim Long kept everyone in a positive frame of mind during that portion of the race where we were running a lap down. And when we finally got back on the lead lap during a caution period (that's where luck played a part), the guys on the team could see the payoff for their can't-lose attitude and it fired them up even more.

Leadership? We got it from Jim Long on pit road, we got it from spotter Eddie Masencup on the roof and maybe we got a little of it from behind the wheel because I let the pit crew know how much of a difference they made on this day.

Without those talented engineers, I'd still be wandering around in the desert looking for a chassis setup.

Without the positive attitude, teams would have been passing us on pit road instead of the other way around.

And without strong leadership, we would have been feeling sorry for ourselves for falling off the lead lap, rather than staying on our toes and being ready when the opportunity to race with the leaders came around again.

So the next time you see that No. 5 Kellogg's/got milk? Chevrolet on the track, cheer for Terry Labonte behind the wheel ... but don't forget those guys in the pits and behind the scenes who are working just as hard for the team's success.

Terry Labonte drives the No. 5 Kellogg's/got milk? Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. He will be providing a biweekly diary to ESPN.com throughout the 2003 NASCAR season. Labonte's personal Web site can be found at www.terrylabonte.net or go to www.hendrickmotorsports.com for team information.