Richard Childress Racing revival brings relief, excitement while challenges remain

WELCOME, N.C. – Sitting in the shop that most people would consider the favorite for a NASCAR Sprint Cup comeback team of the year award, Clint Bowyer joked about an unforeseen benefit of the Richard Childress Racing turnaround.

“Our show-car program has picked up drastically,” Bowyer says with a laugh.

The RCR fleet that started 2009 has pretty much been turned into a show-car division. RCR has lots of extra cars because it has churned out 16 new cars in about the last eight months as it has worked to turn around the organization’s Cup program, which failed to put a driver in the 2009 Chase For The Sprint Cup.

Starting last summer, RCR began finding where its deficiencies were and changing the way its cars were being built. Kevin Harvick could feel the difference in July at Indianapolis. Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton felt the difference a little later. Burton finished the season with four consecutive top-10s (and two runnerup finishes) while Bowyer finished in the top 12 in six of the final seven races.

Four races into the 2010 season, Harvick leads the Cup standings, while Bowyer is fifth and Burton is sixth. But despite what seems to be a resurgence, the RCR drivers aren’t ready to raise the “mission accomplished” flag.

“Why don’t we wait until Richmond in the fall?” Burton says. “I prefer for us to be judged on the first 26 races. I appreciate the attention. I appreciate that we’ve done some things that have made people look at us and say, ‘They’ve really stepped their program up’ because we have.

“But we need to be judged on how we do the first 26 races. And then beyond that, we’re here for a reason and the reason is to win a championship and we need to be judged off of that. We have to judge ourselves every lap, every second, every corner – and that’s how you get success long term – but the jury isn’t [done] yet. We’ll make that determination whenever Richmond in September is.”

It is early. In other sports where teams get off to a quick start, people start talking about whether that team has a legitimate chance for the title. With Harvick atop the points just a few months separated from a 19th-place finish in the standings, there isn’t real talk just yet of championships.

“I don’t think you can be in the title hunt until you get into the Chase,” Harvick says. “We still have a lot of work to do. But we’ve had a good start of the season and we have a lot to build on momentum-wise. And it’s better than starting off 35th, I know that for sure.”

The next step RCR drivers need to take is a win. Burton’s winless streak in Sprint Cup points events is 45, while Bowyer’s is 66 and Harvick’s is 111.
 
“The fire to win is what drives us all and that’s what makes it all go around,” Harvick says. “We need to win some races, but you’re not going to hear us complain about running second because we ran 32nd last year.”

Still, even without a victory, there have been signs of progress – and not just where the RCR drivers are finishing races, but the way RCR drivers have gotten there.

Take Harvick for instance. At Atlanta Motor Speedway last week, he was angry and frustrated over the performance of his car. But his team got the car better and he wound up ninth.

“For the first time all day we were able to pass people there with about 30 laps to go and drove up to 14th or 15th and would have been happy with that,” Harvick says. “We had another pit stop, restarted 10th and finished ninth. Those are the days that you’ve got to have when you’re having 20-25th-place days and we turn it into a top-10.

“Those are the things that we couldn’t do in the past. When we were having a bad day they seemed to get worse. Now our first really bad day, we turned it into a top-10. Those are the things that the 48 [of Jimmie Johnson] does.”

So how does a team that ran in the 20s and 30s last year – the three current RCR drivers combined for 40 finishes of 20th or worse last season – now have eight top-10s in just four events this year?

The new cars and consistently strong engines have had a lot to do with it. And the team went through a reorganization with Burton’s crew chief, Scott Miller, taking over as a direction of competition, where he oversees the engineering of the cars with an eye on speed, handling and durability. He also assists in the dissemination of information among the three Cup teams. Todd Berrier, who was with the now-defunct No. 07 car, moved over to become Burton’s crew chief, and they have worked well together. Harvick and Gil Martin, who replaced Berrier as Harvick’s crew chief last May, also are working well together.

Of course, when drivers and crew chiefs have confidence in the cars and are performing well, it makes everything easier. Bowyer says that last year, there were times when the team was deflated when it got to the race track and that lack of confidence impacted performance.

“It’s not one or two things,” Burton says. “It’s a lot of things. You don’t go from having no teams in the Chase, winning no races, not having a lot of chances to win races to having a legitimate argument to say in every race this year, we have a car that could potentially win the race [except] maybe not Atlanta. You don’t do that by one or two things.

“The company has been changed. The company is run completely different. It’s a completely different atmosphere.”

Now, when the driver gets in the car, he knows he likely will have a fast piece.

“Our engineering program has stepped up in a huge way,” Bowyer says. “That’s something we were way behind on – simulation and things like that. We have come a long way in a short amount of time. … Our cars are way more competitive than they’ve been. [And] it’s what’s behind those cars. We’ve got the right structure in place, we’ve got the right people in place that are going to carry that on throughout the season. We’ve just gotten all our ducks in a row.”

The drivers credit team owner/chief executive officer Richard Childress with heading the revival, shuffling people around and challenging the employees to continue to work hard and improve performance. Once they saw the improved performance, the team was able to build momentum.

“It did weigh on us,” Bowyer says of the struggles. “It weighed on everybody. We worked so hard last year trying to find the answers and just couldn’t. And there’s nothing more disappointing and frustrating than that.

“It wasn’t from a lack of effort. … They were working harder than they ever worked and just didn’t get any reward out of it whatsoever. Everybody was chasing their tails trying to find the answer – and that ultimately causes even worse performances. We were finally able to hit on some things, finally get some positive things going, learning some things about this car and getting everybody back on board.”

While everyone is back on board, Burton wants everyone to make sure that they don’t think they’ve made a successful turnaround. Yet.

“I’m not claiming success,” Burton says. “Our success will be claimed when we are winning races consistently and we are winning championships. That’s when we can claim success. We haven’t done that yet. End of discussion.

“I’m not trying to pull us down and say, ‘All right guys, what y’all have done doesn’t count.’ Because it does count. But what really counts is the level of success. This company has to be built on championships. It has to be built on competing at the highest level. Not on being fifth. Not on being seventh. Not on having a chance of winning a championship. It has to be on winning championships. Until we do that, we’re not a success.”