Labonte and Stewart side-by-side for race

The Joe Gibbs Racing teammates have never started next to each other.
BROOKLYN, Mich. (AP) -- The Sirius Satellite 400 will be a first for Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart.
Both have won poles and races, each has a Winston Cup championship, but today's race at Michigan International Speedway will be the first time the Joe Gibbs Racing teammates start side-by-side on the front row.
Being up front is appropriate for Labonte and Stewart, both of whom have bounced back from a stretch of disappointing races to get into the championship hunt.
Labonte, who will start from the pole, had five straight finishes of second or third before running 17th last Sunday at Pocono -- a race in which he says the team never quite found the right setup.
Before he got on a roll, Labonte had fallen to 15th in the points. Now, he's fourth, trailing series leader and defending race winner Matt Kenseth by 287 points.
Stewart, the defending series champion, went through a miserable stretch from late March to the end of May, finishing better than 25th only once in seven races.
After being as high as second in points early in the season, Stewart found himself 20th after an engine failure relegated him to a 40th-place finish in Charlotte.
Now, after running fourth at Dover and taking his first win of the year at Pocono, Stewart has jumped to 13th and is 96 points behind eighth-place Rusty Wallace.
On the upswing
"It's just the fact that it has come together for both teams at the same time, more than anything else," Labonte said. "Everybody always works hard to make sure that everything is right, but there are so many things that can happen that won't allow it.
"Yesterday was a situation where we were able to put fast laps up for both teams."
Stewart said part of the reason for the progress is that the crews from his No. 20 Chevrolet and Labonte's No. 18 Monte Carlo work well together.
"In my opinion, we are the best team as far as multi-car teams who communicate and share information and work together to make each other better," he said.
"When one of us is on a roll like that, the other one seems to find a way of getting on a roll and that keeps us both up at the level where we want to be.
"If something happens and one of us is having a bad day, the other one is at that level, and they can say, 'Here's what we're doing' and it helps us out. I feel like it's a combination that has worked since we started as teammates in 1999."
There seems to be little competitive jealousy between the teammates. When Labonte knocked Stewart off the pole on Friday, both were able to smile and joke about it.
This is the first time since former Washington Redskins coach Gibbs went to a two-car team in 1999 that his drivers have swept the front row in qualifying.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., second in the standings, 176 points behind Kenseth, will start third, alongside Kurt Busch and just in front of former series champions Terry Labonte, Bobby's older brother, and Jeff Gordon.