Labonte won four races last year, had top-five finishes in 15 others, and just two runs outside the top 20. He grabbed the points race lead for good in late April and virtually never looked back.

	Bobby Labonte will begin his defense of the Winston Cup championship with the Daytona 500.

The model of consistency, Labonte failed to finish only nine out of the 10,167 laps run during the season. Still, the Corpus Christi, Texas, native says his team must do better in 2001.

"Some people might say, 'Well, how could it get better?'" Labonte said. "Well, we don't care how good it was. We only care about how we can make it better. That's just the way we are. We want to make sure that we don't lose anything.

"We want to gain everything that we can get. Even though everything was great, we want to get better."

As the 36-year-old Labonte looks back over last season, he is quick to point out that his racing on the circuit's short tracks was a deficiency. In six races at the three short tracks -- Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond -- Labonte's average finish was 14th, and he had a season-worst, 26th-place effort at Richmond in early May.

"The short tracks probably weren't as good, well, hold it, they never have been good, so that's one thing that we want to work on to get better," Labonte said.

If short tracks were a problem for Labonte, he starts the defense of his championship at a venue that isn't necessarily one of his favorites, either -- Daytona.

"I wouldn't say I don't like (Daytona), it's just the fact I have other tracks that I favor more because I feel like I can control the car better on those tracks than I can here," Labonte said, listing Michigan, California and Dover as his top three preferred tracks. "It is a little different mindset of racing here, than say Michigan, Texas, Rockingham and Darlington."

It was at Darlington in September of 2000 that Labonte might have scored his most dramatic victory, in a race in which he did not lead a single green-flag lap. Labonte, forced to run a backup car in the race after crashing his primary car in a Friday practice session, was first off pit road just before rain forced the race to end after 328 laps.

"That race there was definitely a key," Labonte said. "What I thought was, that we were down and out on Friday. We started in the back on Sunday and those guys chasing us in points were probably thinking they had us down. And then when we ended up like we did, we were surprised.

"So you know as surprised as we were, those guys had to be shocked. They thought they could gain points and they lost points. I felt like that didn't necessarily knock the wind out of their sails, but it definitely got us going one way and they weren't going as good."

And while Labonte looks back at the highlights of his 2000 run with a great deal of satisfaction, he fully realizes defending his title won't be easy.

"Everybody wants to do the same thing that we did last year," Labonte said.

"Heck, I've only won one (title). I've never tried to defend one, so we'll just have to wait and see. But we can't do the same thing we did last year and win."

Labonte will hardly have to go at it by himself this year, as he is part of one of the most potent teams in the sport -- Joe Gibbs Racing.

Not only does Labonte have one of the circuit's top drivers as a teammate, Tony Stewart; he also has one of the most respected crew chiefs in the business, Jimmy Makar. And then there's the boss, Joe Gibbs, who employs the same formula he used as a successful football coach with the Washington Redskins in his racing operation.

"I've said all the time that you don't win races with race cars, engines, parts or pieces," Gibbs said. "You win with people, just like in football. We're in the best position we could be.

"We have two teams capable of bringing the title home again, we have had little turnover in the shop and everyone seems to be hungrier to win this thing again. I couldn't ask for more."

In the end, Labonte's biggest obstacle to repeat as Winston Cup champion could come from his own teammate, Stewart.

"There's no doubt that he (Stewart) is one of the best drivers out there," Labonte said. "But all of our competitors are going to be trying to find something that makes them faster than us.

"We've just got to go out there and do better."