Labonte trying to figure out title race

Mike Harris

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 | 4:03 a.m.

Bobby Labonte has never felt the crushing pressure of a down-to-the-wire championship race.

Until this season, his best Winston Cup finish was sixth.

But the younger brother of two-time series champ Terry Labonte wants very much to believe that his performance this year is an indication that a title is in his future - and not too far in the future.

With just three races remaining, Labonte is second in the standings, trailing Dale Jarrett by a nearly insurmountable 246 points. Still, the 35-year-old Texan feels like he's in a battle.

"We've never won a championship, but we've never lost one, either," Labonte said. "I mean, we've never been this close to losing one.

"They say you have to lose one before you win one. So, if we're not going to win, I guess we're going according to plan, aren't we?"

Along the way, Labonte and Jimmy Makar, his Joe Gibbs Racing crew chief, have learned a lot of lessons about competing at the top of NASCAR's elite stock car series.

"When you sit down at the end of the year and analyze what has happened that year, and look at where you've been strong, and look at your weak points, if you are really honest with yourself, you can find weaknesses," Makar said.

The crew chief, also Jarrett's brother-in-law, said he tries to use those shortcomings to improve himself and the team each season.

"There's always something every year that you want to work on," Makar said. "We look at things that will make us better, what things we can change or do different to make us better."

In their fifth season together, Makar and Labonte have established themselves as legitimate contenders, although Jarrett has turned the championship into a virtual runaway with an exceptional season.

"We've done everything we've needed to do this year to win the battle," said Makar, crew chief for Jarrett until he left the Gibbs team for Robert Yates Racing in 1995.

So far this season, Labonte has five poles and four wins, and has finished in the top five 20 times in 31 races. He has failed to finish just once.

"We've run up front, stayed in front, led races, won races," Makar said. "We've been competitive every week. That was the big key that we lacked in the past, being competitive on every racetrack. Now we feel like we're one of the top five cars everywhere we go."

So, with all that success, how did Jarrett get away from them?

"I think what took us out of the championship hunt was nine races where we've had a severe problem," Makar said. "We've had four engine problems and four wrecks.

"Some of the wrecks were of our own making and some weren't. The motor things, we work on continuously. Then we had two freak things happen."

A ball of rubber came up and knocked a power steering belt off in Martinsville, Va., and in Bristol, Tenn., they had a piece of debris from another car knock the rear end pump belt off and tear up the rear end gear with 20 laps to go.

Labonte just shakes his head when he thinks about such things.

"If you take all those races and say, 'Well, if we had just finished where we were running at that time, fifth, seventh, 10th, whatever it was.' You think about where you would be," he said. "Usually the competition has some spikes in their deal, too. This year we had that and Jarrett didn't.

"I hope we can learn from that to help us win a championship. Then again, you might learn the same thing twice. But we'll try not to."