NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Losing Taught RCR How To Win Again
Kevin Harvick is now locked into the Chase for the Sprint Cup...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted August 15, 2010   Brooklyn, MI
Kevin Harvick (Left), driver of the #29 Shell / Pennzoil Chevrolet, celebrates with team owner Richard Childress (Right) in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series CARFAX 400 at Michigan International Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
When Richard Childress Racing was floundering early in 2009, Kevin Harvick discovered an important lesson: Everyone else on the team hated losing every bit as much as he did.

And that helped give him the necessary faith to stick with the team through hard times and believe it would turn around. But he couldn’t possibly have seen how far RCR would come or how fast it would get there.

The Phoenix-like ascension of RCR, topped off with Harvick’s victory in Sunday’s Carfax 400 at Michigan International Speedway, has been nothing short of remarkable. Little more than a year ago, Harvick and team owner Richard Childress were feuding publicly, the team was seemingly in disarray, competition-wise and was about to lose a key sponsor.

Ultimately, none of the four RCR cars even qualified for the Chase, and the team was shut out of the victory column for the first time since 2004.

But a reorganization of the company’s more than 400 employees and a sharp change in technical direction began in mid-2009, with results that have been nothing short of amazing.

Harvick, who signed a multi-year contract extension earlier this year, has won three races this season and has led the NASCAR Sprint Cup points since May. He is the first driver to clinch a Chase berth, with teammates Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer also in the top 12 of points.

In 2009, Harvick had no victories, five top-five and nine top-10 finishes in 36 races. In 23 races this season, he has three victories, 11 top fives and 16 top 10s.

Harvick now leads the Cup points standings by a whopping 293 over Jeff Gordon, nearly two full races.

Last week, RCR announced that it’s signed Paul Menard to drive a fourth car next year, with sponsorship from Menards. And on Tuesday, the team will announce Budweiser will be Harvick’s primary sponsor next year. It doesn’t get better.

After Sunday’s dominant victory in Michigan, even Harvick admitted he was shocked at the scope of the turnaround.

“When you look at the statistics, you look at the situations, all the things that you take from a year ago, it's hard to believe,” he said. “But it's from a lot of effort and from a lot of people doing their jobs, making changes on Richard's part, me trying to do things differently.”

And it wasn’t easy instilling cultural change, according to Harvick.

“It's so deep with the people that it's hard to explain how much effort goes into turning a company of the magnitude of RCR around in a different direction when basically it's a huge factory of producing stuff and you basically shut the factory down and say, ‘OK, you can't build anything else until we figure out what you're going to build, then we want you to build 60 of 'em in the shortest amount of time you can, then we have to change all the processes, all the things, all the people.’ It's a huge, huge, huge undertaking,” said Harvick. “For me owning a race team, I understand that. It's hard to fathom how big that turnaround is when you really get into looking at it.”

“It's just accumulation of so many things,” Childress added. “Done a lot of changing in personnel. Changed our engineering. You see your weak points. Kevin and I talked about the areas we knew we had to work on. Jeff Burton played a big role. I asked him what he thought on some things. It's a big team effort. I don't get the credit for it. It's everybody going in there trying to turn that ship and we all turned it together.”
Kevin Harvick, driver of the #29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet, crosses the start / finish line to take the checkered flag and win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series CARFAX 400 at Michigan International Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

So is Harvick the driver to beat for this year’s championship? Will he be the man to stop Jimmie Johnson’s run of four straight Cup titles?

The numbers say yes. The driver and his team owner, though, are cautious.

“It's like saying you're going to beat somebody that's won the last four Super Bowls,” said Harvick. “Until you beat that guy, there's no reason to put that pressure on ourselves, I don't think.”

“I don't ever want to be cocky and sit up here and say we're the team to beat,” said Childress. “Then you have to put your head between your tail when you leave Homestead. We don't want to do that. We want to let our teams keep talking and put ourselves in a position to win. Sure, we think we've got the cars and everything to contend for the championship. But we ain't going to be cocky about it.”

LINK> UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: CARFAX 400 - MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
PDF > UNOFFICIAL DRIVER POINTS: CARFAX 400 - MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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