Labonte’s 33rd-place finish not a total loss

Although his new No. 43 Dodge Avenger ran out
of gas, it ran very well.

By MIKE HARRIS

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Don’t tell Bobby Labonte he can’t take anything positive out of finishing 33rd.

The former NASCAR champion isn’t completely disappointed about running out of gas a lap from the finish of Sunday’s road race at Sonoma, Calif.

Though the dry tank likely cost him a top-15 finish, or maybe even a top-10, the way Labonte’s new No. 43 Dodge Avenger ran gave him something to build on this week for the Nextel Cup race at New Hampshire International Speedway.

“Yeah, we unloaded and we were probably the most prepared for that race than we’d ever been,” Labonte said. “We tested twice at Virginia International Raceway so, when we unloaded, we felt pretty confident with the setup we had. We qualified 13th with a good, comfortable race car. We had two good practices and everything was working really good.

“In the race, we were running in the top 12 or so and then we got turned around and went to the back. We were making our way back to the front and we were in going to be in pretty good shape and we ran out of gas with one lap to go and finished 33rd.

“It was one of those deals where we could at least hold our heads up a little bit because we had a good race car and made a good showing,” he added.

Slowly rebuild team

Labonte and the rest of the rebuilding Petty Enterprises team need to keep their chins up as they slowly rebuild a team that has been out of contention for years.

Last year, in his first season with the Pettys, Labonte managed three top-fives and eight top-10s on the way to finishing 21st in the standings.

After the first 16 races of 2007, the 2001 Cup champion is 19th in the points, but with only one top-10. That’s not what teammate and team co-owner Kyle Petty had in mind when he brought Labonte aboard.

“Yeah, sure, you hope that your growth is going to be on a line straight up,” said Petty, who is taking some time out of his No. 45 Dodge in the middle of the season to do TV commentary and is 35th in the points. “But, with the experience and the competitive feeling that [Labonte] brings to the team, we know it’s going in the right direction, even if the results aren’t what we’d like to see.

“We know we’re making progress. We can see it and we can feel it. But the competition doesn’t stand still, either.”

It looks like a long shot at this point, but Labonte has not given up on making it into the top 12 in points and qualifying for the 10-race Chase for the championship.

With 10 more races until the Chase begins, Labonte is 244 points out of 12th.

Strong finish needed

“We have to be in the top 10 from here on out,” Labonte said. “You still can have a bad race or two, but you’re going to have to be consistently racing in the top 10. That way, when you have a bad day, you won’t feel so bad.

“We finished 33rd at Sonoma and we backed that up with a 34th (the week before) at Michigan. That just can’t happen.”

Compounding the problems for the Petty team and everyone else this season is the introduction of NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow, which is competing in 16 races in 2007 and will be run in all 36 events in 2008.

The car, with its front splitter and rear wing, along with a bigger, bulkier silhouette, is totally different from the one the teams have been running. New Hampshire will be the COT’s eighth race — all on NASCAR’s shorter tracks and the Sonoma road course.

Eye more testing

“I think there is more risk over reward in trying some things [in the COT] right now,” Labonte said. “Our situation, I think we want to go and test more. We want to do that rather than doing things at the track.

“We tried some things at Darlington earlier this year and that bit us a little bit. We were better at Richmond, better at Phoenix and had a good car at Sonoma. We know what we need to work on right now, but we don’t know everything.”

For now, Labonte is just hoping that the team will take some more positive steps, and soon.

“We haven’t been as competitive as we wanted to be,” he said. “We’ve been using up our luck because we haven’t been racing as good. We haven’t been performing as good, so we have to perform better, basically, and we have to perform better in the next few races.

“If we don’t we’re not going to be up [in the Chase]. We can’t make it on a gas situation or by staying out of trouble. We just have to race better.”