FORT WORTH, Texas - Rusty Wallace doesn't need to prove to anyone that he can win NASCAR races. It's just that he misses victory lane.

After finishing second behind Kurt Busch last week at Bristol, Wallace has gone 104 races since his last win at California in April 2001.

"It's a losing streak," said Wallace, the 1989 NASCAR champion whose 54 career wins match Lee Petty for eighth-best.

"It's obviously something I'm not proud of, and we've got to fix it because we're a lot better team than that," he said.

The streak almost ended at Bristol, where he is a nine-time winner. He led 100 laps and appeared to have the fastest car, but came up just short after a late restart.

Still, that strong performance gave Wallace plenty of momentum going into Sunday's Samsung/RadioShack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, where he has had several strong finishes.

"If I ever get to pick a race track to go to with some momentum, this is one of them because I like running here," he said.

That wasn't always the case.

At the first NASCAR race in Texas in 1997, Wallace was among several accident victims in the fourth turn. After crashing, he said the turn needed a complete reconstruction, "using dynamite if necessary."

There was water seepage in the first turn a year later.

All the problems have been fixed, and the 1½-mile high-banked track has become a driver and fan favorite. More than 200,000 fans are expected for Sunday's race for a $6.8 million purse.

"That first year, I spun out and crashed and was frustrated with all of that, and didn't like the design," said Wallace, who has since had two fourth-place finishes in Texas. "They fixed it, and now it's really in great shape."

Nextel Cup points leader Matt Kenseth has already won twice, doubling his win total of last year when his season championship helped prompt a change in the way the title will be decided.

Roush Racing teammate Kurt Busch trails Kenseth by 22 points, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose first Cup victory came at Texas four years ago, is 66 back.

Kenseth won at Texas in 2002, when he had a series-best five wins but finished eighth in season points.

"There were no complaints over that," Kenseth said. "Everything was just hunky-dory with the points that year."

Kenseth led just 354 laps all season, but he topped the points standings for a record 33 straight weeks. He was a consistent finisher with a series-best 25 top 10s, which included 11 top fives.

This season began with a ninth-place finish at Daytona, then Kenseth drove his No. 17 Ford to consecutive wins while leading 382 laps at Rockingham and Las Vegas. He replaced Earnhardt as the points leader at Vegas, the site of his only 2003 win.

Earnhardt has won twice this season, and was closer to Kenseth before losing 25 points and being fined $10,000 this week. NASCAR ruled he purposely caused a caution flag at Bristol to stay on the lead lap.

Wallace is 17th in points after his third top-10 finish. His other three finishes were 29th or worse.

"We've had momentum all year as far as the way the car's been handling and the speed of it," he said. "But our pit stops have been atrocious. We had some bad problems. We finally got the right guys, and last week, it was just a breath of fresh air to see how fast they are."

Five stops Sunday were made in an average of 13.9 seconds, two seconds below the season average.

"I really thing we're on track right now," he said. "I feel like I've got all of the problems behind me. Expectations are high."

AP-ES-04-02-04 0447EST