Joe Garone has a message for fans following the Nextel Cup fortunes of Denver's Furniture Row Racing team.

"Tell the fans not to give up on us; this is not an easy deal and it takes time to get it right," team manager Garone said.

Kenny Wallace, driver of the No. 78 Chevrolet, has qualified for one of the past nine races and Barney Visser's team rests 45th in the owners' standings.

Cars in the top 35 in owners' points are guaranteed starting spots and everybody else has to qualify on speed.

"It's an awkward situation because you are trying to judge yourself on Monday," Garone said. "You come in on Monday after a weekend at the race track and we don't qualify and we feel horrible. It's not necessarily a complete representation of how your team is doing because it is very simple to miss these races. It's just so tight right now you just can't have any hiccups.

"Being only 2 1/2 years into this, we have bumps in the road we are trying to get over. As I look at it, the team has come a long ways in the last six months. The progress we are making now is internally and inside the shop and in personnel. We're still in a building mode."

New equipment in the team's East Denver garage will be a help, but Garone doesn't see any changes coming in the Cup qualifying format except to maybe have all the cars outside the top 35 qualify at the same time so nobody would benefit from changing track conditions.

"The distance from the poll to the slowest time that qualified is really tight," Garone said. "The statistics put an extreme amount of pressure on Kenny to get this done. As you miss races, the pressure just builds.

"It's really hard to take that pressure off him. That's kind of what we need to do. You need to try to give him a little breathing room. What it comes down to, you end up missing the race if there is any hiccup on the qualifying lap."

In the nine starts this season, Wallace has a 30.6 average finish.

"We feel like were a very solid 20th to 30th finishing car, but we've got to make the races," Garone said. "When you talk about performance on the race track, you've got to race to get performance and we're failing to do that. We're working hard to get over the hump."

Three for Montoya?

Rookie Juan Pablo Montoya could make NASCAR history with a win Sunday at Watkins Glen, N.Y., and become the first driver to win on three road courses in one season.

Montoya, a former open-wheel driver who leads David Ragan by 26 points in the rookie standings, won the Busch road course race at Mexico City and at the Cup race at Infineon in California.

Pit stops

• Casey Mears' good friend David Carr will be playing quarterback a few hours away from Watkins Glen in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday for the Carolina Panthers. Mears was a fullback and halfback for Stockdale High School in Bakersfield Calif., on the team that featured Carr, who set 16 school records in two seasons as the starting quarterback. Both live in the Charlotte, N.C., area now and Carr was on hand to watch Mears win the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway on May 27.

• Montreal native and open-wheel driver Patrick Carpentier, who finished second in Saturday's Montreal Busch race, will drive in the Busch race at Watkins Glen this weekend and replace regular driver Scott Riggs to try to qualify the Gillett Evernham Motorsports (GEM) No. 10 Dodge for the Cup race. It's not surprising to see Carpentier surface as Riggs' replacement after George Gillett, a Vail resident who is owner of the Montreal Canadiens and Liverpool Football Club, finalized his deal to become majority owner of Evernham Motorsports on Monday. "With George part of the team and the Montreal Canadiens there was a few tie-ins," Carpentier said.

bentonj@RockyMountainNews.com