RCR overdue to bring end to championship drought (cont'd)

Yet even RCR's drivers will admit the team has struggled to catch up to the Hendrick juggernaut, which has won the past three championships with driver Jimmie Johnson. Although the RCR cars have been renowned for their reliability -- Burton, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer are traditionally among the series leaders in percentage of laps completed, and Harvick had an 81-race DNF streak snapped earlier this year at Fontana -- race wins are a different story. Johnson, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards seized control of the Sprint Cup race last season by each recording multiple wins, a feat the RCR drivers found difficult to match. Burton won twice last year, Bowyer once. Harvick, driver of the team's flagship No. 29 car, hasn't won since his Daytona 500 victory to start the 2007 season.

Laps Led Leaders

2008 Season

Pos.	Driver	Led	Wins
1.	J. Johnson	1,959	7
2.	Ky. Busch	1,673	8
3.	C. Edwards	1,282	9
4.	Dale Jr.	896	1
5.	D. Hamlin	766	1
11.	K. Harvick	192	0
12.	C. Bowyer	188	1
16.	J. Burton	140	2

Last year, none of the RCR drivers finished better than 11th in percentage of laps led, a statistic in which the three top championship contenders held the top three spots. Among the RCR drivers this season, only Burton stands better than 15th. It seems like a simple solution -- for the RCR drivers to seriously contend for the championship, they need to lead more laps and contend for more race wins. Toward that end, Dillon said the team placed an offseason premium on finding ways to squeeze more grip out of the notoriously loose Cup chassis.

It's not an overnight fix. But it's not a complete overhaul, either.

"This isn't a thing where one group is messed up, one person messed up. This is a thing where our company is a little bit behind. We aren't miles behind. We are a little behind. We have to catch up in all areas. We have to be a little better in all areas," Burton said.

"I think it weighs on Richard when we're not competitive. It really bothers Richard when we're not competitive. But I think Richard's also realistic. Who would have walked in here three years ago and said, you guys would be making Chases? It didn't look anything like that. Today, a lot of people are assuming we'll be in the Chase. We don't, we know that's a lot of work ahead of us. [But] that's a big difference."

Harvick believes it's just a matter of fine-tuning.

"I think we all have been around long enough to know that if you try to force it, it's only going to make it worse. I think the experience level kind of tames most of that. You know, in '06 we were close, in '03 we were close. In '07, Clint had a shot. Last year we had all three cars in [the Chase], the last few years we've had a couple in. It's one of those deals where we're like right there, and we just need that last little bit to push us over the edge," he said.

"It's a whole lot easier to tear one of these teams apart than it is to put it together again. In order to get that last little bit, in order to go out and beat a 48[car of Johnson] ... it's everything, from myself to [crew chief] Todd [Berrier], to the cars, to everything in between. It just needs that much. We're not rebuilding cars and looking for a miracle here like we were at the end of 2004. We're not having to start over, We're having to fine-tune, and that comes from every department."

Indeed, the RCR franchise has come a long way from 2004, when Childress's best driver finished 14th in points, and the organization went winless for only the second time since 1983. "We did that by improving every single area of our company," said Burton, who witnessed the transformation firsthand. "There was no one thing we were doing wrong. We isolated, defined, made accountable people in every department. When we did that, guess what happened? So we're having to redo that again. It's constant. We've always been doing it. But we've just got to be a little better in all areas."

The results of that effort will determine whether the RCR drivers can challenge Johnson, Jeff Gordon, and the other top contenders this season, and end the organization's 14-year-old championship drought. But as they well know, the window of opportunity stays open for only so long.

"You can't always be building, building, building," Burton said. "There comes a time when the rubber meets the road and you have to win a championship, and we haven't done that yet. There's some anxiety about that, no question."