Drivers already keeping eye on point standings

HAMPTON, Ga. -- If points fell like the raindrops that have plagued NASCAR this season, then fewer Winston Cup teams would be sweating.

	Dale Jarrett suffered a blow in the standings last weekend at Las Vegas. Credit: Autostock

Sunday's Bass Pro Shop MBNA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway marks only the fourth event in 2003, yet some in the garage already are watching their pots of gold.

"I know years ago a lot of teams would get about three-fourths of the way through the season and they'd go, 'Well, it's time to look at the points,'" Ricky Rudd said. "I don't know of any team that does that nowadays."

Consider that Mark Martin lost the 2002 title to Tony Stewart by 38 points, and you know why he hounded pole-sitter Dave Blaney two weeks ago at Rockingham just to lead the first lap -- and snare five bonus points.

With today's competition sometimes separated by hundredths of a second -- and with big movement in the rankings dictated by such small margins -- no opportunity should go untapped even with 33 of 36 races remaining.

"That's what governs your business, your sponsorships, your monies, your revenues, everything," said owner Bill Davis.

"I think you got to set your goals early," said Doug Yates, general manager of Robert Yates Racing. "Our goal is to win the championship, and every week we've just gotta remember that we've just got to be consistent. It's not the one who wins the most races, it's the one that gets the best finishes."

That's one reason Dale Jarrett was so perturbed last week. Forget the contact with Steve Park that spun him into the wall at Las Vegas; ultimately it was the 41st-place finish that grated most, particularly coming on the heels of Jarrett's win at Rockingham. (Teammate Elliott Sadler exacerbated the misery by finishing 42nd with a blown engine).

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"Rockingham was so good and last week it was like everything went wrong," Yates said. "But we just gotta remember it's a long season. You gotta take the ups with the downs and don't get too high or too low and everything will work out."

"Nah, it's never too early," Jarrett said of point tallying. "You have to do that from when they drop the green flag at Daytona. If you're going to win the championship, you've got to be thinking about accumulating every point that you can possibly get in every race."

That's why Rudd's team directed him not to pit with most of the field during a Las Vegas pit stop. Rudd had just gotten back on the lead lap; since he would start at the back anyway, his crew decided he should stay out, lead a lap before pitting, and collect five bonus points for doing so.

"You don't want to do something that's going to jeopardize the finish of a particular race just to get a point or two," Rudd said. "But if it works out where it's convenient, if you can lead a lap and not upset your track position, you have to look at things like that."

Yet, early in the season, too much scoreboard watching can be distracting. Most teams open with goals to reach, new members to acclimate, fragile mindsets to boost. Obsessing about points -- or the lack of them -- can have the off-track impact of a blown tire.

"You move around so quickly at this time of the year," Jeff Burton said. "You can be at 20th one week and sixth the next week. You can flop all around, so you have to look more at your team, about how you're performing and what do you need to improve rather than just saying, 'Hey, we're high in points. We're a good team.' Or, 'We're low in points. We're a bad team.' It's not necessarily a symbol of either one."

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Take Jarrett's record: He finished 10th in the Daytona 500, therefore 10th in the first point standings. The Rockingham win boosted him to second place, but Las Vegas knocked him back to 10th this week.

Burton remains on the UP elevator. He climbed from his 11th-place finish at Daytona to sixth after Rockingham, and he's fourth this week. His Roush Racing teammate, Kurt Busch, took almost as big a tumble as Jarrett. Busch entered Las Vegas last week leading the points. He exited in sixth place, 62 behind this week's leader, Michael Waltrip, thanks to a wreck and a 38th-place finish.

Busch said that, yes, he's trying to grab every early point available, but, no, he's not consciously driving that way.

"There's a lot of elements that go into it," Busch said. "And if you're able to take a positive result afterwards whether you finished well or whether you learned a lot of things out of the day -- that's what your objective is."

Certainly, this season's early Hole-Digger Award goes to Ryan Newman. His scary four-and-a-half barrel rolls down Daytona's frontstretch stuck him in 43rd-place to open the year -- last in the Daytona 500 and in the points. At Rockingham, he finished 14th after starting 21st, and climbed to 32nd in the points.

Last week, Newman finished seventh at Las Vegas after starting third. Entering this week's event at Atlanta, he's 17th in the standings. Friday's qualifying may have signaled both his recovery (points-wise) and his arrival; Newman grabbed the pole for Sunday's race with a fast lap of 191.417 mph, edging last year's pole winner in the spring event, Bill Elliott.

"Yeah there's always a fear of that," Newman said of early obstacles. "I mean, everybody's got that fear, but we're all here to try to do the same thing."

"You need to be up in this end of the garage area," Rudd said of the top 10 teams, whose haulers park in the prime garage spaces. "And you need to be there all year long."

According to Newman, that top-10 quest actually begins, "Way before Daytona ever comes. You go to Daytona focused on leading laps and winning, and you go to Rockingham and focus on the same thing. You do whatever you can to salvage the best position no matter if you're looking for a win or a top five or a top 10."

Rather than coveting bonus points or watching scoring towers, Yates said his two teams should meet a broader -- and higher -- expectation.

"If we finish seventh or better, we've had a good week," Yates said of Jarrett and Sadler. "If we finish seventh or worse, then we've got some issues we've got to work on."

"We're not as competitive as we need to be right now," said Rudd, who's eighth in the standings. "We're working on that. But in the meantime we're not getting ourselves dug in a hole. We're eighth in the points and so our strategy is certainly we want to get better on the race track and that will come.

"But in the meantime let's don't go out there and finish 30th or 40th with DNFs. Let's at least log points while we're getting our act together."

"Whatever it is," Jarrett said, "you've got to get those points."