LONG POND, Pa. - Dale Jarrett says he is not having much fun this season as he sits 24th in the point standings. He has struggled the last 10 races with no finishes better than 20th and has slipped from 10th to 24th in points.

"It sucks," Jarrett said Friday. "I hate it. I'm a competitor and I want to compete, and that doesn't mean competing for 35th to 40th [place]. I want to be seeing those guys up front on a regular basis, not when I'm trying to get a lap back. That has been difficult.

"As difficult it is on me, it is very difficult on these guys that work on the car, too, because they're putting their heart and soul into it, too."

Jarrett will leave Robert Yates Racing after the 2006 season for Michael Waltrip Racing. He said one of the problems at RYR could be the lack of depth in engineers, possibly a byproduct of RYR having only two teams instead of three or four. He said other organizations have 15-20 engineers and Yates only has six to spread over two Nextel Cup teams and a Busch team.

He said his team has regressed recently, likely due to a combination of aerodynamic, chassis and setup misses by his crew. The engines and the effort are there, Jarrett said.

"I want this to be a good race team that is solidly on its feet and all it needs is a driver to step in and take over and good things will happen," Jarrett said. "Right now, our goal has to be getting back to becoming a top-10 team before we can even think about winning.

"If we won right now, other than a restrictor-plate [race] or something, it would be pretty much a fluke. We're not close enough to talk about winning. We have to get back to respectability and consistency on a weekly basis."

While he's struggling, Jarrett said there have been no discussions of his possibly stepping out of the Yates car before the end of the season.

"There aren't going to be any changes made here," said Jarrett, whose sponsor, UPS, will move with him to MWR. "We have a sponsor and we have a driver. We committed to 2006 before this year ever started. I haven't broken any contracts.

"That's the whole thing about all this [baloney] going around here - I haven't broken any contract. When I told them last August that I wanted to drive in 2007, everybody understood that is what I wanted to do. Nothing was given to me. I didn't have a contract. It was getting into April and May, and I needed to know what I was going to do for the next year, so I didn't break anything."