When Chip Ganassi made the jump from open-wheel racing to the top stock car series part way through the 2000 season, there were shudders of anticipation and concern in NASCAR garages.

Here was a high-powered team owner, winner of an unprecedented four straight championships in the CART series in the '90s and winner of the 2000 Indianapolis 500, making the move to stock cars and providing yet another major challenge to the top teams in what was then the Winston Cup series.

Sure, Ganassi, who bought out 80 percent of the established team of Felix Sabates, was a newcomer to the ways of NASCAR, but his track record was that of an owner who knew how to meld winning drivers, top-notch personnel and big-time sponsors.

In 2001, Ganassi's first full season as majority owner of the team and the year Dodge re-entered the series after a decades-long absence, a rejuvenated Sterling Marlin won two races and finished third in the points for the team. In 2002, Marlin nearly won the season-opening Daytona 500, picked up two more race wins and led the series points for 25 weeks until a neck injury from a crash in Kansas slowed him down and then prematurely ended his season.

Ganassi, known in CART for signing virtually unknown drivers such as Alex Zanardi and Juan Montoya and turning them into champions, put Jamie McMurray into Marlin's No. 40 Dodge for the final six races of 2002 and the youngster responded with a victory in his second Cup start, the fewest starts for a winner in NASCAR's modern era.

But there hasn't been much for Ganassi to cheer in NASCAR since that surprising win. Nor have things been much better in open-wheel racing.

Scott Dixon did give Ganassi an Indy Racing League title in 2003, but the last of his three victories that season - in June at Richmond - is the last IndyCar Series victory for the three-car team. After Sunday's IRL event in Sonoma, Calif., Dixon was ranked 15th in the season points, the best of Ganassi's entries.

With Marlin, McMurray and another youngster, Casey Mears, running full-time for Ganassi in NASCAR since the start of the 2003 season, and road racing specialist Scott Pruett also running a handful of events, the team owner has no victories and only 27 top-five finishes in 292 overall starts.

McMurray has been the brightest light for the team during that period.

He barely missed out on the inaugural 10-man championship chase last year - finishing 11th in the regular season and 11th overall.

Heading into Sunday's race at California Speedway, with only two events remaining until the start of this year's Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, McMurray is again the best of the Ganassi drivers, but he lost his tenuous hold on 10th in the standings with a 26th-place finish last Saturday night in Bristol.

That left McMurray in 12th place, 12 points behind 10th-place Jeff Gordon.

Mears is 25th in the points and Marlin, who will be replaced next season by Busch Series driver David Stremme, is 29th.

Moreover, McMurray, who has a year left on his contract with Ganassi, caused a furor by signing for 2007 with Roush Racing to take over Mark Martin's No. 6 Ford, leaving him as a lame duck with Ganassi next year.

The Ganassi team will expand with 19-year-old Reed Sorenson, another Busch star, running a fourth Cup car next year.

McMurray, who would have preferred to get out of his 2006 obligation to Ganassi, says his reason for leaving the team boils down to failing to win.

"This is my third year and we've come close to winning some races, but I didn't feel we're improving enough from where we started three years ago," he said. "That has nothing to do with the people.

"I feel like we have a really intelligent group of people and beautiful race cars. But sometimes things just don't work out. ... You only get to have so many years of being called a winner before you're established as being not a winner, and I don't want to be in that group."

Amid this maelstrom of losing and change, Ganassi remains a stoic and determined figure.

"What people don't understand is there's not one thing wrong when you're doing bad," he said. "And you know what, when you're doing good, there's not one thing that's good. It's a lot of things.

"I will tell you this, I think that our biggest challenge is that Dodge had an advantage, an aerodynamic advantage, in the first couple of years they came in. The other manufacturers knew that and lobbied against that, and basically NASCAR evened all that stuff out with templates and everything. It's leveled the playing field drastically."

But Ganassi remains an optimist.

"I think we're making gains and I think we're doing better," he noted. "I also think that Roush and Hendrick and Gibbs are beating us right now, but I will tell you that it's a lot easier to be a failure in this sport than it is to be a success. It's a tough road to be a successful team here in this business.

"And that doesn't mean we're not getting better. We're a lot better of a team than we were. We have a lot better knowledge of where we're at, what our cars are doing and how they work than two or three years ago, and it's making us a better team. Having said that, we're still getting beat in certain areas and we still have more work to do, but we're a much better team than two or three years ago."

And Ganassi said he is going to do whatever it takes to turn this team into the kind of powerhouse he once had in open-wheel racing.

"The only thing we're scared to try is jumping off a bridge," he said. "Other than that, we're open to anything."