Winston Cup racing used to be fairly cut and dried: the guy with the most wins in a season usually wound up as the champion.

But with stock car racing's major league having such parity in recent years, winning just isn't as important as it once was. Rather, the more consistent a driver can be -- trying to get more top-five and top-10 finishes than the next guy -- has become the foundation for building championships.

Look at last season. Matt Kenseth notched a series-leading five wins. In previous seasons, he probably would have won the Winston Cup title going away.

Instead, Kenseth ended the season with a sobering eighth-place finish, a perfect example of the type of havoc that greater parity has wreaked upon Cup competition.

Rather, it was Tony Stewart who took home the champion's trophy at the end of the season, and Kenseth wound up a distant 368 points behind the champ. Sure, Stewart had wins -- three, in fact, tying him for third-most in the series with Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson -- but it was Stewart's incredible consistency that brought him the title.

Stewart had a series-leading 15 top-five finishes, and was third in overall top-10 finishes with 22. Add that all together and you have the recipe that made up the 2002 Winston Cup series champion.

Kenseth watched as Stewart made his climb upward toward the top in the second half of last season. In the process, he learned a very valuable lesson on the significance of consistency vs. victories.

That's why we see Kenseth as a totally different driver this season. While he and the team have not made any significant mechanical changes to the No. 17 Ford, they're arguably racing smarter.

"We were able to learn a lot about what we did right and what we did wrong, and so far that's helping us this year," Kenseth said.

Sure, he and his team are still racing for wins -- and have one triumph thus far this season (Las Vegas).

But compare what Kenseth did in the first 15 races last year with what he's done in the same period this year, and the story is told: He had three wins and nine overall top-10 finishes, putting him in fifth-place. This season, he has one win and 13 top-10 showings (including seven top-five outings), with the closest challenger, No. 2 Dale Earnhardt Jr., having 10 top-10s.

	Kenseth has finished outside the top-10 just twice this season.

And, where he had four finishes of 30th or worse and another of 20th or worse in his first 15 races last year, Kenseth's worst outings have been 22nd and 20th place.

That's it. Everything else has been top-10.

So is it any wonder why the Wisconsin native sits atop the standings, holding a commanding 185-point lead over Earnhardt heading into Sunday's Dodge/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway?

Not to Kenseth, it isn't. He's gone from holding a meager 20-point edge over Earnhardt to his 185-point margin in just the last four races. He just keeps padding and padding his lead, something he hopes he can continue to do all the way to the championship by season's end.

"We haven't really changed our approach," Kenseth said. "We've been maybe a little smarter about our stuff, and have had ourselves in a better position to keep ourselves out of trouble, but other than that, we've approached everything the same. We've just had maybe a little better luck.

"Last year, by this time already, we had one mechanical failure that gave us a terrible finish, and we had the two accidents at both Daytona and Talladega that gave us terrible finishes. So, that's the difference between these two years, so far."

Because of his even-keel driving style this year, it's no wonder people are increasingly referring to Kenseth as "Mr. Consistency."

One of the biggest tests thus far this season for Kenseth -- and whether he'll be able to maintain his incredible string of consistency -- will be Sunday's race on the nearly two-mile road course carved out of the Northern California wine country.

Past history is not in Kenseth's favor: In seven career starts at Sears Point/Infineon, he has yet to record a top-20 finish. Combined with his similar struggles at the other road course on the schedule, Watkins Glen (N.Y.), Kenseth has an abysmal 26.3 average finish record on tracks where he has to turn right.

Still, he's holding out hope of changing that on Sunday in a race where parity pretty much goes out the window, if for nothing else because of the atypical racing facility itself.

	“	We haven't really changed our approach. We've been maybe a little smarter about our stuff, and have had ourselves in a better position to keep ourselves out of trouble, but other than that, we've approached everything the same. We've just had maybe a little better luck. ”
		— Matt Kenseth

"Racing in Sonoma is tough," said Kenseth, who finished 39th in last year's race there. "Anything can happen there. There's a different kind of strategy that comes into play in road racing. There's a totally different driving style, totally different race cars, it's a totally different deal, something that we're just going to have to work real hard at and hopefully get a good result out of it. I feel like it's a big weekend for us, we haven't had a good finish out there yet, and it's somewhere where we need to get a good finish to feel good about what we're doing."

In a sense, Kenseth is in a similar situation to what Sterling Marlin was in last year. Marlin led the Winston Cup standings for 25 of the first 26 races. But when his consistency began to falter in the second-half of the season, Marlin lost his hold on the lead before eventually being forced out by a season-ending injury with seven races left.

But Kenseth sees one flaw in how Marlin wound up losing his lead in the standings last season: the No. 40 team became more conservative in its approach, which ultimately led to its downfall. Kenseth is bound and determined not to let that happen to the No. 17 team, particularly since after the final off-weekend of the season next week, the entire Winston Cup community will be in the heat of 20 grueling consecutive weeks of racing without a break heading to the championship.

"I think it's very important to stay racing as hard as you can race, try to win races, try to be up front to lead laps," he said. "Those are the things you have to do to try to stay on top all year. If you try to be conservative and start finishing 10th, 12th or 14th, and still think that's good enough just because you're maintaining your lead, you're going to get beat by the end of the year."

And the key to maintaining his incredible streak of consistency and keeping guys like Earnhardt at bay is really quite simple, Kenseth says: "Keep finishing in front of them. If you finish in front of them, you get more points."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@Yahoo.com.