DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The saying goes "Speed Kills," but if you ask Jeff Burton, it's a lack of speed that's been holding his Richard Childress Racing team back from contending more vigorously for a Cup championship.

It's appropriate that Burton took center stage at Daytona International Speedway on Friday at Preseason Thunder Fan Fest, because coming to RCR in the latter half of 2004 certainly revived the veteran driver's career, even as Childress' teams went on a surge.

“

We're striving for greatness here. We're not looking to be mediocre, we're striving for greatness [and] if we want to be analytical and understand what it is that we have to do better, then it's speed.

”

-- JEFF BURTON

But it also points out the problem. In Burton's first full season with the team, 2005, its best car was Kevin Harvick's, in 14th. Since then, Harvick has finished fourth, 10th and fourth; while Burton's been seventh, eighth and sixth. Newcomer Clint Bowyer iced the cake by making the last two Chases and finishing third and fifth in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

But with the exception of Bowyer in '07, no RCR driver has consistently or seriously challenged for the championship -- won the last three years by Hendrick Motorsports' Jimmie Johnson. And cutting it to the bone in an instant, Burton said the needed change is simple, though finding it won't be.

"Well, unfortunately it's the same answer I've given the last three years -- or at least the last two years -- and that's speed," Burton said. "You know, the thing that we haven't done very well as a company, if you look at the laps we've led, the races we've won, that's our weakness -- that's a big weakness.

"In racing, speed is pretty darned important. We have to continue to do the things that we do well, but we also have to find a way to lead more laps to put ourselves in position to win more races, and you do that by brute force speed, and that's what our focus has been on."

Burton has the consistency angle down pat, particularly in the last three seasons, where he's averaged seven top-five finishes and 18 top-10s each season, while winning a single race in 2006 and 2007 and winning twice last year.

It makes him optimistic about '09, when RCR will expand to a four-car team, with Bowyer joining crew chief Shane Wilson on a new team and Casey Mears joining the No. 07 Impala squad tended by Gil Martin and formerly chauffeured by Bowyer.

"We're excited about the year," Burton said. "At the same time to sit up here and say that we're going to come down here and do this and do that -- I think that's kind of foolish because we don't know what we have. I mean, without testing we honestly don't know where we stand up to our competition.

"We're optimistic. We've put a lot of work, effort and energy into trying to find a way to be better. We feel really confident our engine program has taken a major step, so we feel real strong about that coming to Daytona. We saw that at Talladega in the fall. So we're excited.

"But there's a lot of unknowns, and those unknowns are a cause for concern."

As Burton said, the big one is terminal, race-winning speed and given the current economic climate, Burton said finance isn't the simple answer to the time-honored statement, "money equals speed, how fast do you want to go?"

"I think it's more than that," Burton said. "I don't think that [because] we aren't short on money -- we have good funding. We just haven't done as good of a job as some. We've done a better job than a lot, but there's some that have done a better job.

"We're striving for greatness here. We're not looking to be mediocre, we're striving for greatness [and] if we want to be analytical and understand what it is that we have to do better, then it's speed."

Burton said he was more than willing to look in the mirror to find a solution.

"It's more than just working on the cars, it's driving them, too," Burton said. "The drivers have a huge play in how fast our cars go, so we have to be willing to look at ourselves and try to find a way to be better, as well."

And finally, Burton said he hoped an intelligent approach would yield results this season.

"We haven't done a tremendous amount of offseason testing because we don't feel like we have the tire that's going to give us the information that we really need," Burton said. "Now, last year we tested a lot -- I mean, the 31 [Burton] and the 29 [Harvick] in particular tested a great deal.

"We tested as much as any single teams. We thought we got results from that, but we had the right tire. Without the right tire, I don't know, so what we've tried to do is not test as much and take that money and put it in stuff that hopefully will yield a result.

"You know, if it doesn't, I can tell you we'll be doing a lot of testing and trying to do it the old-fashioned way, but it's clear to me, as it is I think most people, that as we continue to invest in technology and we continue to find other ways to do it, that that ultimately is going to be more effective than going to a race track and testing, especially when you can't go to the race track that you're going to race on."