It's been six weeks since Bobby Labonte last looked at the Winston Cup standings. The season has started so poorly for the series champion, he doesn't want to know how bad things really are.
But he isn't panicking.
"I haven't looked at the standings since Daytona, there's no point," Labonte said. "Based on how things have gone, I can't worry about it. We have so many races to go and so many things can happen, I try not to allow myself to get all wrapped up in that."
For the record, he's 19th this week almost unthinkable for the driver who practically led wire-to-wire last season.
Labonte was a model of consistency last season. He won four races, finished in the top 10 in 24 events and had nary a breakdown.
He took his first lead in the points three races into the year, briefly lost it, then took it over for good 10 weeks into the season. No one really challenged him from there, and Labonte won his first series championship by 265 points over the late Dale Earnhardt.
So far, this year has been the exact opposite.
He's struggled to adjust to the new tires Goodyear has provided, which aren't suited to Labonte's hard style of driving. Also, mechanical problems have surfaced for the first time in almost two years.
"Last year wasn't easy, even if it looked that way," Labonte said. "But if it did, this year hasn't looked anything like that."
Labonte was knocked out of the season-opening Daytona 500 in a 19-car accident. He rebounded the next week with a second-place finish in Rockingham, N.C., but engine problems plagued him in the next two races.
As his crew fought through a thick cloud of puffy white smoke, trying to make the motor hold for 25 more laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway, it became clear Labonte couldn't finish the race giving him his first DNF since 1999.
"Am I surprised we had two mechanical failures? Yes very surprised," crew chief Jimmy Makar said. "But in this business, sooner or later you run into those kinds of things. You can't expect to be immune from them all the time, even though it seemed like we were last season."
Just when Makar thought he figured out what was wrong with the Pontiac's engines, he discovered a new problem in the final practice before last week's race in Bristol, Tenn.
The team pulled the engine after practice, replaced it with a new one and coaxed the car to a 13th-place finish.
That leaves Labonte with only one top-10 finish heading into Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway.
But no one on Labonte's team is really worried, even though he trails leader Dale Jarrett by 249 points after six events.
"We're just a few races into a 36-race schedule, so it's not even close to red-alert time," Makar said. "But at the same time, we've already made half the mistakes we're allowed to make this season."
Working in Labonte's favor are poor starts by other championship-caliber teams.
Both Mark Martin and Jeff Burton have had their own struggles and trail Labonte in the standings. Tony Stewart, Labonte's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, who had six victories last season, is 18th in the points.
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