Casey Mears (Left), driver of the #07 Jack Daniel's Chevrolet, talks with team owner Richard Childress (Right) on the grid prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: John Harrelson/Getty Images)
NASCAR Sprint Cup team owner Richard Childress told SPEEDtv.com on Wednesday that he is realigning the engineering staff at Richard Childress Racing, as well as swapping the entire teams between his No. 29 and 07 cars.
In an exclusive interview with SPEEDtv.com, Childress said the moves are being made in hopes of better results for drivers Kevin Harvick and Casey Mears, who after eight races are ranked 16th and 22nd, respectively, in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings.
“We’re changing a lot of our stuff in our engineering (department), the complete engineering structure, ” said Childress, who was the car owner for six of the late Dale Earnhardt’s seven NASCAR Sprint Cup championships.
Asked why his teams have started slowly this season, Childress said RCR is one of the teams most negatively affected by NASCAR’s test ban. Instead of doing its experimenting at test tracks as it has in years past, the team has been trying different things during Cup practice at race weekends, and that has cost the organization, according to the team owner.
“I don’t make excuses and I don’t accept excuses,” said Childress. “If you give someone a reason, you can fix a reason for things. And I think one of our big problems has been were going out and doing a lot of testing at the track (during race weekends) and that has put us behind. Kevin didn’t get much practice at all at Bristol and he didn’t get much practice at all in Texas. Casey, it took us quite a while to get him up and running in races because of the stuff we’re trying that normally we would have proved while we were testing. Everybody’s under the same test policies, but I think that our teams tested more than any team out there last year. I know we did. I’ve seen the numbers.”
Things apparently came to a head last weekend at Phoenix, according to sources close to RCR. The best finishing of the RCR Chevrolets in the Subway Fresh Fit 500k was Jeff Burton, who was a disappointing 15th, while Mears was 20th, Clint Bowyer 26th and Harvick 30th.
