In the meritocracy that is NASCAR team haulers are parked in order of their points position, with the back-markers appropriately located in the rear. Working your way up the line at Darlington Raceway, you pass the bright corporate logos of large national beer, cereal, power tool and shipping companies -- among many others -- before reaching two Yates Racing trucks adorned by only the organization's insignia under the image of stylized, fluttering checkered flag.

Unable to find full-time sponsorship after it reorganized under a new name last year, Yates Racing has instead made due with patchwork deals that have helped keep its two Fords afloat. But despite that rather notable handicap, drivers Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland have managed to stay safely inside the top 35 in owner points all season, something a few of their fully-sponsored rivals have been unable to do. And Kvapil has turned into a consistent top-20 performer, notching three top-10s despite having six different sponsor names on the hood of his No. 28 car already this year.

In the most recent points event two weeks ago at Darlington, the former Truck Series champion ran with the leaders for most of the race and posted an impressive finish of eighth. This bearing the sponsorship of a Ford dealership in Fayetteville, N.C., that was as much a throwback tribute to Fred Lorenzen as anything else. It was another step forward for team owner Doug Yates, who is rebuilding his organization with money out of his own pocket, along with help from partners Roush Fenway Racing and Ford.

"Everybody asks before the season starts, what are your expectations? We're overachieving a little bit from what I thought setting out," Yates said. "I was so beat down last year, too, so you have to look at it pretty negatively. But yeah, I'm really impressed with what we're doing, but maybe not surprised. Todd Parrott is a championship-winning crew chief, and Travis has won races in the Truck Series and never really got a solid shot here. I just feel momentum is building on this team."

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We haven't been real flashy, finished in the top five or anything like that. We've been nice and consistent, performing well, and logging all the miles. Along with that, we've been able to gain a lot of points.

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TRAVIS KVAPIL

Yates' team has operated under the radar for much of this year, his cars running at times with white, sponsorless hoods bearing only the name of the organization. But it's a rather impressive comeback from the disarray of last season, when -- in the midst of the retirement of patriarch Robert Yates, the departure of sponsor Masterfoods, and the dissolution of a short-lived deal with the Newman/Haas open-wheel team -- the two Yates cars managed only a single top-five finish between them. Doug Yates could have walked away and focused on running his engine operation, but instead he paired with former Roush executive Max Jones to revive the family business.

And that he did, shepherding a team that to this point has run better even without sponsorship than the organization did last year with it. Realizing his team's limitations, Yates stopped trying to build his own cars and instead bought them from Roush, with whom he also co-owns Roush-Yates Racing Engines. Ford chipped in with wind tunnel and seven-post time. Yes, they're strapped for resources -- they don't have the money to test as much as some other teams, and their pit crews are often stretched to the limit. But for right now, at least, they're making it work.

"It's pretty rewarding, really," said Kvapil, who moved up to 18th in points after his Darlington finish. "We're parked by points, and it's nice to walk in the garage and see some of the cars behind us and the success they've had in the past. It's still a long season. We're not even a third of the way into it. We just need to continue what we started with good, solid finishes each week, completing all the laps, and gaining momentum. We haven't been real flashy, finished in the top five or anything like that. We've been nice and consistent, performing well, and logging all the miles. Along with that, we've been able to gain a lot of points."

Kvapil, whose car at Darlington was a No. 99 of Roush driver Carl Edwards last year, doesn't seem surprised. "The people involved in this from last fall on, we knew what we were going to be up against, and we knew we had the personnel and equipment to go out there and get the job done," he said. "To an outsider looking in, it might have looked bleak. But we knew what we had going on inside. This isn't the Yates Racing team of last year. This is kind of like a new team. We've gone though a lot of changes, and it's definitely showing up on the racetrack."

The Roush agreement has been key, helping Yates build its car inventory, and also providing needed engineering support for an organization that needs to watch ever dollar. "I guess you could say we owe some people some money on the engines and the cars and things like that, but that's OK," Yates said. "Because I think as people see our performance get better, hopefully as this economy takes a turn for the better, I think people will recognize that we're a good value. I think what's hurting us right now is, everyone seems to think you need a $20 million sponsor, which is not true. I think what our team offers is really good exposure for really good value."

This late in the season, it's difficult to find a big-dollar primary sponsor, given that advertising dollars are typically committed earlier in the year. The Yates team is making due right now in piecemeal fashion, finding companies to sponsor a few races at a time, a practice that pays the bills but stretches the marketing department. The plan is to get through this season, and find somebody willing to back the Yates cars for all of 2009.

"I think it's tough to sign a multi-million dollar deal in the middle of the season," Kvapil said. "The sponsors that are out there have already committed, and they're already in place. A lot of that stuff happens in the offseason. I know moving forward we have some two- and three-race deals coming up, and they're always talking about, this sponsor might want to do four or five races down the road. We feel like we are going to keep piecing it together and moving forward."

Of course, if the CEO of a Fortune 500 company showed up at the Yates shop with a check tomorrow, he wouldn't turn it down. "We're not short-handed or anything like that," Kvapil said. "But if we had a little more money, maybe we could do a little more testing, or get one or two more guys in here to kind of help out. Our guys work really hard and there's definitely not any extras around Yates Racing. We're doing a great job, and we have everything we need. We don't have any extra, that's for sure. It would be nice, hopefully when we get some sponsorship and color on these cars full-time, then we can kind of take that next step and develop our race team and get it to the next level."