DARLINGTON, S.C. - The King of NASCAR sits in a brown leather chair inside his spacious motorhome, reflecting on how another Nextel Cup season has almost passed without a Petty Enterprises car in Victory Lane.

"It's not too good now," Richard Petty says of his team, "but we're like everybody else out there, we're going to start all over again next year."

Unless Kyle Petty or Jeff Green pulls off the remarkable and wins the season-ending Ford 400 at Miami-Homestead Speedway this weekend, it'll mark five years since a Petty car won a race. The team, founded by Richard's father, Lee, in 1949, has won only three times since Richard Petty took his final checkered flag 20 years ago.

Petty, 67, grows more frustrated each year that clicks by without the familiar taste of success. But he believes strongly it's still possible for the family's team to compete in today's high-tech big-money sport.

"We did everything by the seat of your britches. We didn't have computers, we didn't have engineers. The drivers and crews got some big hammers and beat on it until we got it right," Petty said.

"When I came along, we put good workers together," he said. "Now, you've got to have good workers, but you've got to have good ideas."

Those ideas are harder to come by for a company that's gotten by on the Petty family's Southern roots, down-home personality and remarkable ability to succeed in the roughneck tobacco-chewing world of early NASCAR. The company holds 10 championships and 268 victories, all but three of those coming between 1949 and 1983.

Patriarch Lee won three NASCAR titles when stock car racing was largely seen as a Southern curiosity. Richard's talent and style - to this day, he's rarely seen without his trademark sunglasses, cowboy hat and boots - intrigued generations of race fans throughout the country on his way to a record seven Nextel Cup titles.

Kyle, Richard's boy, was next in succession. But he couldn't match his father's imposing legacy despite moderate success - his eight NASCAR victories all came with other teams.

Since Kyle folded his pe2 team into Petty Enterprises five years ago, the company has continued its struggle to rediscover the same winning touch the family had for all those seasons.

Part of the reason, Kyle Petty says, are the multi-car corporations like Roush Racing, Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing that began well after the Pettys and successfully combined sponsorships and modern know-how.

"It's a lot easier to take a startup company to the top than to rebuild an IBM that's been there before," said Kyle, who runs the company's daily operations. "Do you know what I'm saying?"

The younger Petty says his father gets impatient at times, but understands the changed landscape. "Any time you're used to winning like he is, you're frustrated," Kyle said. "I'm frustrated."

With two races left, the No. 43 Dodge made famous by Richard Petty and now driven by Jeff Green, is 29th in points. Kyle Petty's No. 45 car is 33rd.

"Honestly, I thought it would come faster than this," Kyle Petty says.

Much of the team's future hopes were pinned on Richard's grandson and Kyle's son, promising young racer Adam Petty. The family's fourth generation driver, Adam was 19 when he died running laps at New Hampshire International Speedway in 2000.

Richard says Adam's death took the spirit away from the family and the race shop.

"Everybody sits down and says what they need to do, what'd they'd like to do or what they'd like to see," he said. "All of a sudden, that book's closed. You don't get to finish that book. That's what makes it difficult."

NASCAR chairman Brian France says the Petty name remains a marquee one for the sport. Besides, France added, "he was my first idol."

Some have criticized the team's headquarters, which can look more like a museum than a modern race shop, but Richard Petty responds: "It don't matter where you work on a car."

Both Kyle and Richard don't expect wholesale personnel changes for 2005. Green and Kyle Petty, plus the team's crew chiefs and other key team members will be back when racing resumes in February at the Daytona 500. The biggest change ahead? Adjusting to the new Dodge Charger that replaces the Intrepid next season.

"We got plenty of space, plenty of equipment," Richard Petty said. "We got everything except the right way of doing it."

The King hopes his old team figures that last one out next year.