Hall of Fame quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman both won multiple Super Bowls and have a hard time grasping a concept of success that doesn't include winning.

But the co-owners of a one-car NASCAR team are no longer playing for those great Dallas Cowboys teams.

"I don't particularly like celebrating coming in 19th, but that's a pretty good day for us," Staubach said. "It's very unusual to celebrate coming in 19th in anything."

Or being 22nd in the standings, which Hall of Fame Racing driver Tony Raines is after nine races of the team's second season.

Considering the multicar teams run by the likes of Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs, a Hall of Fame coach who has been involved in NASCAR since 1992, this has to be considered a successful season so far for the quarterbacks-turned-car owners. No other one-car team is higher.

"I don't want to over-characterize it and say it's not going like we hoped. I just say we all feel like we can be better than where we are," Aikman said. "Our expectations for the remainder of this year are the same as what they were when we came into the season: top 20. I think that's still a relatively modest goal."

Raines is coming off a 22nd-place finish at Talladega, where he was running in the top 10 late before getting caught outside a line of cars. With no teammates to depend on for help, he quickly got shuffled back from ninth to 20th in one lap - with 10 to go.

Talladega ended a stretch of three straight top-20 finishes that included a season-best 13th at Texas - the "home" track for the former quarterbacks responsible for all five of the Cowboys' Super Bowl titles. Raines has finished lower than 24th only twice.

"Up until the day you win a race, you'll always want to finish higher," crew chief Brandon Thomas said. "That said, it's obviously a lot more rewarding from a performance standpoint to come back and say, 'We finished on the lead lap the last couple of weeks."'

Raines has finished every lap of the last four races, and all but 19 laps this season. The No. 96 DLP HDTV Chevrolet - the number was derived by multiplying the jersey numbers of Aikman (8) and Staubach (12), which were already taken in NASCAR - has been running at the end of every race.

"We're starting to hit a lot of the goals we set out for ourselves," Thomas said. "The key is to keep that mentality and that momentum rolling as much as we can and to improve on it as we go."

Hall of Fame Racing finished 35th in owner points in its inaugural season, when Terry Labonte drove the first five races and ensured the car would get into fields with his standing as a two-time NASCAR champion.

Aikman and Staubach expect to do better this season, but realize they're only a second-year team that's not in position to compete for the Nextel Cup title yet.

"You want to take that leap, but it takes time," Staubach said. "We've worked real hard, Tony's driven well. We've got a very, very hardworking team, but still to get into the Chase someday, it's going to take some time.

"We're competitive and we understand how difficult the sport is to really run up front. So our goal was someday to be able to compete at the very top of the sport."

The Super Bowls didn't come right away for either quarterback.

Staubach had to wait until his third season to become the regular starter for the Cowboys before winning two championships in the 1970s. Aikman lost all 11 of his starts as a rookie in 1989, then won three titles in a four-year stretch in the mid-1990s.

Though Hall of Fame Racing remains a one-car team - Aikman and Staubach say that will likely change - they have benefited from a partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing that provides engines, equipment and technical help.

That's a huge difference from the NFL. Gibbs, the coach of the Washington Redskins, certainly wouldn't be sharing any information with the division rival Cowboys.

Aikman is the lead NFL analyst for Fox, and Staubach also the chairman of the committee working to get the 2011 Super Bowl played in a new billion-dollar stadium being built in Arlington, Texas.

Staubach is already becoming known as much for NASCAR as his playing days.

"Yeah, I've really found out that there's just a lot of people that are involved in racing that you didn't know about before," Staubach said. "When they see I'm involved in it, they bring it up all the time."

Maybe one day those Super Bowls trophies won't be the only ones he has to talk about.

NASCAR

NEXTEL CUP

Crown Royal 400

Site: Richmond, Va.

Schedule: Friday, qualifying (Speed Channel, 3 p.m.); Saturday, race (FOX, 4 p.m.).

Fast facts: Hendrick drivers have won six of the first nine races, including the last two by Jeff Gordon. … Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't won since last year's Crown Royal 400.

BUSCH

Circuit City 250

Site: Richmond, Va.

Schedule: Friday, qualifying (Speed Channel, 1 p.m.), race (ESPN2, 4:30 p.m.).

Fast facts: Kevin Harvick has won the past three Busch events at Richmond dating to the fall 2005. Harry Gant also won three straight at the track from 1991-92. … Brad Coleman picked up his first career pole last week and finished a personal-best ninth in the race.

NHRA

O'Reilly Midwest Nationals

Site: Madison, Ill.

Schedule: Friday, qualifying, 2 p.m.; Saturday, qualifying, 9:30 a.m. (ESPN2, 2 p.m., tape); Sunday, eliminations, 9 a.m. (ESPN2, 4 p.m., tape).

Fast facts: Robert Hight has advanced to the final in four of his five starts this season and now trails Funny Car leader Ron Capps of Carlsbad by just 45 points. … Warren Johnson appeared in his first Pro Stock final in 27 events last weekend.

- Associated Press

Pit Passes

North County Times

Smith finally finishes

Saturday's race at Altamont Motorsports Park was not free of mishaps for the Moses Smith Racing team, but the former Escondido resident reached the finish line in his third career NASCAR Grand Nation West Series race.

Smith qualified in 15th position and encountered carburetor problems just after the green flag dropped for the Altamont 200. Later in the race, two flat tires forced unscheduled pit stops and dropped Smith back to the rear of the field. But he made his way through traffic to finish where he started, in 15th place.

"The car was working well for me," said Smith, who pilots the HASA Pool Products Chevy Monte Carlo and had a pair of DNFs in his first two races. "I just could not believe that I had another tire go down. Both were punctured by rocks that had been thrown on the track from the infield. What luck."

The Altamont race will be televised by the SPEED channel on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

Bubba breaks through

Kawasaki's James "Bubba" Stewart wrapped up two titles in convincing fashion Saturday night at the Seattle stop for the Amp'd Mobile Supercross Series. The 21-year-old rider from Haines City, Fla., clinched the Amp'd Mobile World Supercross GP crown and his first Amp'd Mobile AMA Supercross Series championship with his 12th win of the stadium season.

This weekend, at the season finale at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Stewart will go for his 13th win, one short of the season record of 14 shared by Ricky Carmichael (2001) and Jeremy McGrath (1996). The Las Vegas race will feature an 800-foot start chute, the longest in AMA Supercross history.

The Las Vegas round will be televised live on the SPEED channel starting at 7 p.m. CBS will air a season recap show on Sunday at 10 a.m.

- Rick Hoff