Winless trio running out of races to find Victory Lane

The clock is ticking for several high-profile drivers to either find Victory Lane or end the season winless.

That list includes Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth and maybe most surprising, Jeff Gordon who brings a 37-race winless streak into Sunday's Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

While Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson flies toward a third straight championship, Gordon is mired in the longest drought of his Sprint Cup career.

The four-time champion hasn't gone winless in a season since 1993 and has knocked down at least two victories each year since.

But 2008 has been an up-and-down campaign at best for Gordon who was able to make the Chase but hasn't consistently even challenged for wins all year.

"It surprises me," said Gordon. "Not only did I think we could win this year, but also battle for the championship. It's been up and down, but it hasn't been a terrible year. I wouldn't be too disappointed with this year if we had a win, but not having a win, it will be disappointing if we don't get that done."

When the series rolled into Texas last November, Gordon led Johnson in the Chase standings on the strength of six victories. He finished seventh and lost the lead and championship to Johnson, a turn of events that carried over to this year's mediocre to date performance.

"We have been good enough to win at times, but we haven't been good enough on a consistent basis to pull it off," said Gordon, who has never won at Texas and struggled mightily when the series visited the track in the spring.

"We have been leading here with less than 50 laps to go and didn't win. Those are frustrating, but nothing like what we experienced here in April."

Should Gordon not crack the win column before the season finale at Homestead, don't expect any wholesale changes to the No. 24 squad including crew chief Steve Letarte's post.

Jeff Gordon hasn't finished winless since his rookie year of 1993. (Getty Images)

"We're not changing Steve or crew chiefs," Gordon said. "I believe in him. The problems we're having are not Steve. We need to build more depth on the team, and Steve is a big part of organizing that and has really been spearheading a lot of the ideas that are going to be improvements for us for this season and next year."

Kenseth's season has included a new crew chief as Chip Bolin took over calling the shots for the Roush Fenway Racing driver when longtime No. 17 head Robbie Reiser moved into a general manager's role with the team.

While Kenseth admitted to some growing pains with the new partnership early on, he's comfortable with things now and believes winning is right around the corner.

"We've been in position to win a few times and just haven't been able to get it done for one reason or another," Kenseth said. "But I think we've made real progress from where we were back in the early part of the season and I like the direction we're headed."

"I wish things would have gone better up to this point in the Chase to where we were a contender, but, overall, it's been a pretty good year."

Although Kenseth hasn't found Victory Lane, he has nine top 5s and 19 top-10 finishes in 33 starts this season.

The 2003 series champion has made the Chase every year since it debuted in 2004.

"The overall goal is to do better each week -– this week in Texas will be no different," he said.

Texas would be as good a place as any to believe Kenseth will snap his winless streak. He has a win and seven top 10s in 12 career starts at the 1.5-mile track and posted a pair of runner-up finishes a year ago.

"I'm really looking forward to going to Texas," Kenseth said. "It's been a pretty good track for us. Right now we (Roush) seem to be running really good at the mile-and-a-half, and the two-mile intermediate type tracks with all five cars in the Top 10 last weekend." "So we've got a lot of confidence going there. It's one I really enjoy going to. It's a great facility. It has tons of great, enthusiastic race fans out there, so I'm really looking forward to it."

Harvick is also excited about returning to Texas where he's enjoyed success over the course of his career. In 11 Sprint Cup Series starts at TMS, Harvick has two top 5s and four top-10 finishes and has completed all but nine laps of competition.

"Oh yeah. This place has been a really good race track for us on the Nationwide and Cup side," Harvick said. "We've run really well on these types of race tracks this year. I have a lot of confidence when we come to Texas Motor Speedway. I've had some really good runs there in my career. For whatever reason, I like this race track. We don't seem to qualify very well there, but we always seem to find a way to finish strong."