The pairing with JGR has been perfect, and Kyle has had a dream start to this season.

"To be the odd man out at Hendrick, that gave him motivation to go out and race hard and win and be like, 'Hey, I could be doing this for you,'" Kurt said. "But we know that right now Toyota and Gibbs is a strong combination and you throw in a 23-year-old that is on top of his game, it only makes sense that he is doing well."

Kurt was on a similar roll in 2003 and 2004, when he won seven races and captured his first championship. But he seems stuck in neutral now, sputtering since his headline-grabbing start to the year. He tangled with Tony Stewart in the first practice of the year, and the scuffle spilled into the NASCAR hauler.

It was Kurt who got the last laugh, though. He pushed teammate Ryan Newman past Stewart on the last lap of the Daytona 500 to snatch the win from him and give it to Penske Racing.

There's been hardly a peep out of him since. His Penske team has struggled to make the front of his No. 2 Dodge turn the way Kurt likes it. Those handling problems, coupled with consecutive wrecks in Talladega and Richmond and then trouble with a wheel during a late pit stop last week in Darlington have made for a frustrating stretch of racing.

The second-place run to Newman at Daytona was his only top-10 finish of the year, and he's been 33rd or lower four times this season.

"On a good day, we'll finish 12th and that's not acceptable for me, for Penske Racing or the fans of the Miller Lite Dodge," he said.

Kurt got hot late last summer, winning two of the first three races in August to put himself into championship contention. He made the Chase and finished seventh in the final standings, but knows he's got a lot of work to do to put himself in that position again.

"We need those oddball things to stop happening to us," he said. "The rich get richer in this deal. If you're car is running good, you can overcome problems. We need to have a better car to do that."

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