NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Ricky Craven of Newburgh would love to jump-start his season Sunday.

And what better place than Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, the site of the most memorable win of his career.

It was Craven’s dramatic, paint-swapping triumph by .002 seconds over Kurt Busch at the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 last year that highlighted his great start in 2003.

He was fifth in points after that race, the fifth event in the 36-race schedule.

But Craven and the PPI Motorsports team weren’t able to sustain the momentum and finished 27th in points.

He is off to the worst start in his four-year affiliation with Cal Wells III and the PPI Motorsports team, as he is 29th in points after four races.

He has now gone 32 races without a top five finish.

Craven’s previous worst four-race start with Wells was 20th in 2001.

His best finish in nine races bridging the end of last season and this year was last Sunday’s 22nd at the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

He has qualified 17th twice this year after failing to qualify higher than 26th in his last five races a year ago, and said Tuesday there is light at the end of the tunnel.

“I feel like we’re right on track,” said Craven during a NASCAR teleconference. “We’ll be battling for top 10s, top fives and wins. I’m not underestimating the competition. We just need to work through some changes.

“We’ve gone from Pontiacs to Chevys and we’re a single-car team in a sport primarily made up of multicar teams. We have to find ways to overcome those things,” added Craven. “Those are only a few of the hurdles. But I never want those things to become excuses or detriments to what we want to accomplish.”

Craven said from a competitive standpoint, he is “frustrated” by the way things have gone.

“We want to run well now,” he said.

But, from a realistic standpoint, he said, “we have to be patient.

“We’ve got a new crew chief [Dave Charpentier], new cars, new tires [with a softer compound] and a new spoiler package,” said Craven. “If we were one team in a three- or four-car team, it might be easier to make the transition. Being a single-car team, we need to make the most of our time, money, energy and testing. We have to be very intelligent about the things we do.”

Craven has driven Fords, Pontiacs and Chevys for PPI Motorsports and has piloted his Tide No. 32 to 24 top-10 finishes; 10 top-fives and two wins in three-plus seasons.

“We can succeed in this business,” insisted Craven, adding that most of the team members are back from last year.

He said he will always cherish last year’s win at Darlington and that it had a lot of positive fallout for him and the team.

“No question, we got a lot of attention for it and Kurt got a lot of attention for it. Kurt was very gracious about it,” said Craven. “You’ve got to remember why this sport is so popular. It’s entertainment. That day, the folks got their money’s worth. You can’t lose sight of that. We’re in the entertainment business and we proved that.

“That was like a well-written script and Kurt and I followed that script,” added Craven. “That was racing in its purest form.”