SIBLING RIVALRY:
With his 18th-place finish at New Hampshire, Terry Labonte held onto ninth place in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series standings and has now set his sights on younger brother Bobby, who is 132 points ahead in eighth. In the last half-dozen races, and eight of the last nine, the elder Labonte's finishing position has been higher than his results for the same stretch of races in 2002.
ANOTHER LABONTE BEST:
By completing all but one of the 300 laps in Sunday's Sylvania 300, Labonte inched closer to a personal single-season record for percentage of laps completed. With nine races remaining this year, the two-time champion has completed 97.87 percent of all laps run. His personal best is 97.88 percent, set during his championship season of 1996.
STREAK UPDATE:
Labonte has now run to the finish in all 27 races this season, pulling within three of matching his single-season best of 30 races completed, a mark set just last year. He remains one of only three drivers who have completed every race this season, with the others being Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth. Labonte has extended his overall string of consecutive races without a DNF to 32, currently the longest streak in the series. The last time he failed to finish a race was last fall at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. The modern-era record is 56 straight finishes, set by Jeff Gordon in 2001-02.
CHASSIS NO. 262 FOR LABONTE:
In this weekend's event at Dover, Kellogg's / got milk? Racing will enter Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 262, the same car Labonte drove to victory at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway last month, leading the final 33 laps to claim his 22nd career win. The car has been run at two other tracks this season (Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway).
LABONTE DIGS DOVER:
Labonte is looking forward to his Dover return, with good reason. In this year's first trip, he placed 10th -- his best Dover finish since 1998 and the first of three straight top-10s that helped spark Labonte's 2003 turnaround. He followed that with a seventh-place finish at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway and a 10th-place run at Michigan International Speedway that lifted him to 15th place in the standings. Three more top-10s during the second half of the season, including the victory at Darlington, have helped Labonte advance six more spots in the standings.
TERRY LABONTE, DRIVER OF THE NO. 5 KELLOGG'S / got milk? CHEVROLET: (ON MAINTAINING THE TEAM'S POSITION IN THE TOP 10.) "We were a little disappointed with that finish (18th) at Loudon, but glad it didn't cost us anything in the points. Now that the team is in the top 10, we want to keep moving forward, not slip back. We've come so far this season, and we're not done yet."