The No. 42 Dodge has three top-10 runs in six starts this season. Credit: Autostock

For Mears, Texas race comes at perfect time

After three rough runs, team comes to familiar surroundings

FORT WORTH, Texas -- At first glance, you'd think Casey Mears would be disappointed with qualifying 20th for Sunday's Samsung/RadioShack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. That is, until you realize that in both of Mears' fourth-place finishes in last year's Cup events at Texas, Mears started from the 30s.

"We were just loose. I'm not sure what happened," Mears said about his qualifying run. "That's about 15 spots better than we qualified here last year and we ran fourth. You always want to qualify better, but obviously it isn't critical."

	Inside the Numbers Casey Mears at Texas Year Start Finish 2003 26 27 2004 6 7 2005 32 4   35 4 Average 24.8 10.5

Particularly when you have the record at Texas that Mears has. In three of his four Cup starts at TMS, Mears has finished in the top three. How good is Mears at Texas? Two of his five career top-five runs have come in the Lone Star State.

"I don't know if it was our body package that worked," Mears said. "There's not one thing that I can pick out about this track that suits my style, but I do like the higher speeds.

"I like Texas, Atlanta, Charlotte -- places where you can carry a lot of speed and you've got to get the car to handle. The racing is fun and the track usually gives you a lot of options as far as the passing goes. It's starting to widen out now and I think it's become a better racetrack.

"I enjoy it a lot. Some guys do and some guys don't, but I really enjoy the track."

The timing couldn't be better for the No. 42 team. After top-10 runs at Daytona, Fontana and Las Vegas to open the season, the team has slowed. Mears finished 21st at Atlanta, 25th at Bristol and 27th at Martinsville.

Still, Mears finds himself 10th in the Nextel Cup Series standings, 209 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson.

"Unfortunately, the last three races we've fallen back and we're in a position where we need to get some good finishes to maintain our top-10 standing."

Even with the woes, Mears said the team never even considered going back to running the Intrepid, as other Dodge teams have.

"We really haven't been as worried about the Charger as some of the other guys have," Mears said. "Obviously we haven't gone to the extent of running the Intrepid and some of the other stuff. We've been focused on running the Charger and doing the best job we could with it.

"You want to know you're competitive. At the end of the day I think we were competitive at Martinsville. There were about five guys faster than the rest, but we were competitive with the majority of the field."

Regardless of what model he runs, Mears just wants to finally get his first Cup victory.

"A win anywhere would be special for me right now," Mears said. "I'm going into my fourth year, and I feel like I'm in my second year or year and a half of being competitive.

"I just want to get the monkey off my back and get that first win and focus on going down the road."