AVONDALE, Ariz. -- To win or not to win isn't a question in NASCAR. It can be the difference between staying employed or not whether it's in Cup, Nationwide or the Truck Series.

But while winning races, per se, isn't all that keeps a driver in NASCAR's premier series, for its elite members it's a definite -- and definitely needed -- badge of honor.

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There's been a lot of bright spots in our season, a lot of things I think we've done right and there's been a lot of mistakes that we've learned from to make our team stronger.

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-- MATT KENSETH

Winning, or not, is a foreground topic in the Sprint Cup garage at Phoenix International Raceway because, with two races remaining this season, two men with significant annual winning streaks on the line have yet to hit Victory Lane in 2008.

Former four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon has gone 39 races since his last victory, at Lowe's Motor Speedway in October 2007. But even more important, Gordon's won at least two races in each of the last 14 seasons, since 1994.

Gordon said the winless drought hasn't changed much about how he or his Hendrick Motorsports team approaches a weekend, whether it's Phoenix, where he's won once in 19 tries or Homestead, where he's 0-for-9.

"It really doesn't matter what our stats are, good or bad at any racetrack -- we go into that weekend believing we can win the pole, that we can win the race and constantly pushing the car and ourselves to improve, whether we won the last race there or finished dead last," Gordon said after winning the pole at Texas, another track where he's never won. "That's just the kind of team that we are. We know everybody's talking about us not winning."

Gordon, who picked up a spot in the points, to fifth, after he finished second to Carl Edwards at Texas, would go nowhere near writing this season off as a loss.

"It's certainly not as big of a failure as sometimes we make out of it because we haven't won so far," Gordon said before Texas. "Anytime you make it into the Chase; anytime you're [fifth] in the points at this point in the season, it's not a bad season. But obviously we want to win and we aim to win every weekend and it's been frustrating that we haven't achieved that. (Continued)