Bobby Labonte just missed the Chase last year and wound up 12th in points. Credit: Autostock

Preview: B. Labonte

No. 18 team expects to snap back with new crew chief

Throughout the first half of the 2004 Nextel Cup season, it appeared as if Bobby Labonte was a lock to qualify for the 10-race playoff.

Following the Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland -- the season's midpoint -- Labonte rested comfortably in the sixth points position, less than 50 points outside the top five.

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But trouble was brewing. Crew chief Michael McSwain would soon be gone, leaving engineer Brandon Thomas to lead the No. 18 bunch. The team struggled to find a setup Labonte was comfortable with, but managed to remain within striking distance of the 400-point cutoff window, and entered Richmond with an outside shot at qualification.

Unfortunately, that didn't materialize. Labonte fell to 12th overall by season's end, marking just the third time since 1996 he failed to finish in the top 10, and the first time in a decade-long tenure at JGR that he failed to win a race.

"Obviously last year was a unique situation for our race team to make a change in the middle of the year," Labonte said. "That was the biggest thing that happened to us.

"If we don't do that again we'll be better off and that's what we plan on not doing. We also have to know we have to be more competitive. We have to finish races better than we have been and than we did last year to be in the top 10 in points. We know we have to improve on things."

	Credit: Autostock
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And for the record, Labonte feels the team has improved during the off-season, due to better communication above all else.

"A lot of (the improvement) is communication between Steve and me, and between Steve and guys that work on the racecar so that we can understand each other," Labonte said.

"Steve" being Steve Addington, a veteran Busch Series crew chief who moves to the Cup Series for the first time.

And that's not all that's new at JGR. Jason Leffler joins Labonte and Tony Stewart in the Nextel Cup stable at Gibbs this year, adding depth to the resource pool teams so desperately need.

Hopefully for Labonte, that will play a factor next month as he tries to separate himself from the who's-who list of active former champions who have never gone to Victory Lane in the Daytona 500 -- Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Rusty Wallace, Tony Stewart, Terry and Bobby Labonte.

Labonte's best finish in the Great American Race came in 1998, when he finished second to the late Dale Earnhardt.

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