AVONDALE, Ariz. -- To win or not to win isn't a question in NASCAR. It can be the difference between staying employed or not whether it's in Cup, Nationwide or the Truck Series.

But while winning races, per se, isn't all that keeps a driver in NASCAR's premier series, for its elite members it's a definite -- and definitely needed -- badge of honor.

“

There's been a lot of bright spots in our season, a lot of things I think we've done right and there's been a lot of mistakes that we've learned from to make our team stronger.

”

-- MATT KENSETH

Winning, or not, is a foreground topic in the Sprint Cup garage at Phoenix International Raceway because, with two races remaining this season, two men with significant annual winning streaks on the line have yet to hit Victory Lane in 2008.

Former four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon has gone 39 races since his last victory, at Lowe's Motor Speedway in October 2007. But even more important, Gordon's won at least two races in each of the last 14 seasons, since 1994.

Gordon said the winless drought hasn't changed much about how he or his Hendrick Motorsports team approaches a weekend, whether it's Phoenix, where he's won once in 19 tries or Homestead, where he's 0-for-9.

"It really doesn't matter what our stats are, good or bad at any racetrack -- we go into that weekend believing we can win the pole, that we can win the race and constantly pushing the car and ourselves to improve, whether we won the last race there or finished dead last," Gordon said after winning the pole at Texas, another track where he's never won. "That's just the kind of team that we are. We know everybody's talking about us not winning."

Gordon, who picked up a spot in the points, to fifth, after he finished second to Carl Edwards at Texas, would go nowhere near writing this season off as a loss.

"It's certainly not as big of a failure as sometimes we make out of it because we haven't won so far," Gordon said before Texas. "Anytime you make it into the Chase; anytime you're [fifth] in the points at this point in the season, it's not a bad season. But obviously we want to win and we aim to win every weekend and it's been frustrating that we haven't achieved that.

"And it's been an up and down season for us. It hasn't just been a stellar great season like we had last year. So what I'm proud of is the fight that this team has shown over the last 10 races. We've made a lot of improvements to the car and the points have shown for it. The win column hasn't yet shown for it, but we've still got [two] to go."

The 2003 Cup champion Matt Kenseth has gone 34 races since his last score, at Homestead-Miami Speedway in last season's finale. Kenseth's won at least a race a season in the six years since 2001, but he wouldn't write this season short if he fails to win one of the last two races, either.

“

That's the great part about our sport. It's very unpredictable as to who's going to run good [or] who's not going to run good; who's going to be terrible and how everything's going to play out.

”

-- KEVIN HARVICK

"There's been a lot of bright spots in our season, a lot of things I think we've done right and there's been a lot of mistakes that we've learned from to make our team stronger," Kenseth said. "There's ups and downs. I'm disappointed that we don't have a shot at the championship, and at this point we haven't had a win yet, but the bright side is we've been able to make the Chase, we've been able to be consistent, there's a few races we had good enough stuff to win in the right circumstance. So, you know; kind of right in the middle of the road."

Kenseth said winning wasn't the only yardstick he uses to measure his team's value.

"Yeah, of course," Kenseth said. "It's not two teams, it's not like a football game where there's one winner and one loser -- there's 43 [teams] out there, and obviously when you run sixth that's better than running 16th or whatever. You still measure how you are compared to your competition, and we haven't been as good as the top few of our competition who are the ones up there running for a championship. We've been as good or better than a lot of the teams."

The fact that only 12 drivers have won this season, the least in the sport's last five years, does nothing to ease the pressure or the expectations, according to Kevin Harvick, who's in the midst of a 69-race winless streak himself, after winning seven times from 2005-2007.

"It's something, I've learned, that you can't force," Harvick said. "You go out and try and put yourself into that position to be able to win. Bottom line is we haven't put ourselves in enough of them this year.

"We've run really good the second half of the year and we've had chances to win races, but the amount of them haven't been enough. I think 15 or 20 guys can still win races. It's just a matter of the way circumstances have worked out.

"That's the great part about our sport. It's very unpredictable as to who's going to run good [or] who's not going to run good; who's going to be terrible and how everything's going to play out."

Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart is one man who's happy he managed to win this season, snapping a 44-race winless streak and a career-long 10-year string of winning at least one race.

"I think the closer the season is coming to the end, obviously, the more thankful we are for our win at Talladega," Stewart said. "Obviously, at that time of the season we wouldn't have predicted that with two races to go we would only have one win on our season. It definitely puts a lot of emphasis on that particular win, now.

"As competitive as we all are, when you've won every year, you don't want to end the season without having won a race. I think that, almost, would be the most devastating part of a season; to say you had a season that wasn't successful because of [not winning]."

Chase contender Greg Biffle's had a season in which he contended for the championship, finishing second, in 2005; but then he failed to make the Chase the next two years. But through it all he's continued to win and he cited the importance of that stat.

"That zero [wins] kind of hangs there," Biffle said. "I've been really fortunate. I've been able to win a race every season [six] I've been in the Sprint Cup Series so far.

"You get nervous when you get three quarters of the way through the season. It was Kansas last year that pulled our zero column -- we were able to put a "1" in there. Then this year it was all the way until Loudon and Dover, so yeah, it's hard -- but some of the guys make it look so dang easy -- [but] it's tough when you go a season without winning a race."

Biffle cited his Roush Fenway Racing teammate Edwards, who between the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series has won four of the last five races and was second in the Texas Nationwide race, as making winning look easy.

"The thing is, is that it's so competitive and I think that [the list of winless drivers] is evidence right there," Edwards said. "We had our [winless] year in 2006. Tony [Stewart] went for a long time, Dale [Earnhardt] Jr.; [other] guys have gone for a long time without a win.

"It's a really competitive sport and the difference between wining and losing is such a slim margin that you can have a couple [wins] slip away and those might have been the only couple chances that you had for a while. I don't think it's a reflection on any of those guys or their performances as much as it's a reflection on the competitiveness of the sport.

"I know that when we had that 2006, we were running great but all these little things would happen. Everything has to go so perfectly to win that we just didn't get one."

In the end, Harvick said it's just part of the sport's cycles.

"It's just so unpredictable [and] hard to know what's what," Harvick said. "I know a lot of people want to read 'fewest winners since '99' or whatever the case may be. It really doesn't matter. If you go back, I'm sure there are years that have been just like this."

That's little consolation to Gordon or Kenseth fans.