The Colorado license plate gives away the final destination. Other transporters leave the racetrack and head east on the Interstate, toward North Carolina and the hub of NASCAR nation. But the brown and black truck turns west, on the lonely road toward the only Nextel Cup shop nestled on the front range of the Rocky Mountains.

Home for Furniture Row Racing is Denver, a city better known for pro football than auto racing, a place 2,000 miles removed from the multitude of race teams and support companies clustered around Charlotte. In an old waterbed manufacturing plant converted into a race shop, they assemble cars and load transporters and try to find their footing in NASCAR's premier series.

"Quite honestly, I think it's a good thing. I'm not just saying that," team general manager Joe Garone, a former NASCAR official, said of Furniture Row's unorthodox location. "It's harder to get going, but I believe once we're done, once we're built and our team is rolling, it's going to be a better situation."

Furniture Row is owned by Barney Visser, a Denver-based businessman who has fielded cars on NASCAR's top circuit since 2005. The attempt to go full-time has been a difficult one, with the team making just 10 events this season. The organization split with driver Kenny Wallace after the Aug. 12 race at Watkins Glen, failed to make Michigan with Scott Wimmer in the seat, and will have Sterling Marlin in the No. 78 car for this weekend's event at Bristol.

But those struggles, Garone believes, aren't related to location.

"The common thought is, there are a lot of negative things, maybe all negative things, about being out in that area. What we're finding is, there are some positives," he said. "Once you have your people, and whether you train them or whether you hire them, once they're there, they're more apt to be focused more on their program. They don't have any race teams there to be interrupting their work or their thought process.

"In the Mooresville [N.C.] area, everybody tends to go to lunch together and they share information and lot of conversations take place and guys jump from team to team. Not that that's bad, but it's just something we don't deal with out in Denver."

For Garone, a Denver native, taking the job meant coming home, to a city where his parents and his wife's family still live. Not so for crew chief Jay Guy, who was well ensconced within the NASCAR bubble in his previous job working for the Wood Brothers and living in Kannapolis, N.C.

"We've gotten some people from some big organizations to come here, and they were in the same boat that I was -- tired of being in the rat race in Mooresville, where people are jumping ship all the time and all that," Guy said. "This is kind of refreshing, because there are no other race teams around here on this level. You can work on a lot of projects and keep secrets that will help the car go fast from getting out by lunchtime."

They rave about the skiing, and the landscape, and the fact that you don't bump into employees from other shops in line at the grocery store. But the distance clearly presents hurdles, most of them logistical for a team much father removed from eastern races than its competitors. Cars are prepared not two weeks out, but four weeks. Parts have to be ordered a week earlier than they would be for a team based near Charlotte, where many of the sport's vendors are located as well. Cars have to be loaded a day earlier on the transporters, which have to depart the race shop a day earlier than their eastern counterparts.

Furniture Row uses two identical race haulers, so one can head to the next race site without waiting for the other to return. The advantage comes for western races like next week's at California Speedway, where being based in Denver allows Furniture Row's hauler to leave Wednesday night or Thursday morning, about two days later than other teams.

"The location is not a problem at all, because we have both trucks running up and down the road," Guy said. "You just have to have enough good people in place to where your stuff is done a little ahead of everybody else. Anywhere from like Texas west, we're a lot closer than anybody else."

Hiring new people involves flying potential employees out to see the shop and the area, and convincing them that racing out of Denver can work.

"I let them know about Barney and the commitment that he's made and the kind of person that he is, and the success that he's had in business for 30 years now. Because really, if you cut through the chase, guys want to have security," said Garone, who has been with the team since the beginning.

"Some people, and I've found this surprising, would rather live in Denver than in North Carolina. A lot of skiers and a lot of people who like that dry air. It's not been a bad deal."

But it has been a struggle for an organization with aspirations of expanding to two cars. That depends on sponsorship, and the team is hoping that its location can open doors to some regional companies that might not have considered backing a NASCAR entry in the past. But right now the primary focus is on improving performance for a team whose best finish was 21st in the spring race at Bristol.

"Obviously, you want to compete to run up front," Guy said. "But you've got to be realistic with your goals. Lately, we've fallen short on our goals in qualifying, and haven't really been able to work on anything race-related. But we've got a seven-post shaker machine installed [in Denver], and we're working on that a little better, the guys in the engine shop are working harder and harder to get us more horsepower.

"Things are coming around, but we're not a super team like Hendrick or Roush to where we have all those people in place. We have to do a lot of trial and error. It's paying off, it's just not showing up on the racetrack yet."