BOBBY LABONTE Driver quietly in the hunt

For a competitive guy, he's got an even temperament.
By MIKE HARRIS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bobby Labonte is NASCAR's stealth racer.
Unlike teammate Tony Stewart, whose off-track tantrums keep him in the headlines, Labonte generally goes about his business without the fanfare.
"Other people just get more attention than we do," Labonte said. "I guess we probably do keep a low profile. We don't hunt extracurricular stuff."
He certainly hasn't generated any headlines in the first 10 races this year. Still, Labonte is ninth in the NASCAR Nextel Cup standings with three top-five finishes and five top-10s.
He trails leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. by just 188 points and is only 51 points behind Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick, who are tied for fifth place.
"We've had a little bit of bad luck or we'd have been higher in the points," Labonte said, shrugging. "We've had two second-place finishes and we easily could have won both of those races.
"We should have. But at least we ran good."
Example
Last Sunday's race at California Speedway was typical of his 2004 resume.
Early on, Labonte's No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet was not a factor. Then he slowly and steadily made his way toward the front.
By the waning laps, Labonte was second, chasing down leader Jeff Gordon, moving within 10 car-lengths and still closing before an empty gas tank cost him a shot at victory in the Auto Club 500. He still finished fifth.
Instead of an angry outburst about his team's fuel miscalculation costing him a win, or at least another runner-up finish, the smiling Labonte ran alongside Gordon's car on pit road, shaking the winner's hand and patting him on the helmet.
Typical Labonte.
"It's interesting because he's the combination of being a really nice guy and being full of competitiveness," said Hoyt Overbagh, the engineer on Labonte's team. "He's got to run well, if he doesn't run well he's not happy."
That's a side of Labonte the racing public rarely sees.
"I couldn't be doing this for a living if I wasn't pretty competitive," said Labonte, the 2000 series champion. "You're racing against the best in the business and there isn't much difference between the guys who run up front and win and the guys who don't.
"But it just isn't my personality to get in people's faces."
Labonte said he sometimes feels for Stewart, the 2002 series champion who can't seem to stay out of the spotlight. The past two races, Stewart has been involved in a series of collisions.
"I've done that before, too: no wrecks for 38 races then all of a sudden you wreck in 10 in a row," Labonte said. "Tony's been Tony for years. We all know that."
Confident
Meanwhile, Labonte goes quietly about the business of racing.
He's keenly aware of NASCAR's new championship formula, with the top 10 drivers in the standings and any others within 400 points of the leader after the first 26 races eligible for a 10-race "Chase for the Championship."
"We're pretty confident we'll be in the top 10 in points after 26 races," Labonte said. "We've got a good enough race team to do that.
"Probably, we just need more consistency in our finishes. We keep having a good week and a bad week, a good week and a bad week. We just need to be more consistently in the top five instead of the top 10 -- but it's hard to get there."
If Labonte does find that consistency, though, it's a safe bet he'll do it quietly.