No NASCAR race team revolves around one man -- and no matter how much impact a Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, Richard Childress or Joe Gibbs might have -- neither does an organization.

But a man can make a significant impact, given the proper array of weapons and, most significantly; a group of teammates who've bought into the same goal.

Scott Miller was Jeff Burton's crew chief, before being promoted to RCR competition director.

“

Scott's taken his position and run with it and done a great job -- a phenomenal job. Richard has given him the latitude to do that.

”

-- JEFF BURTON

Richard Childress Racing's in that position in 2010, following a 2009 campaign that was the organization's worst in four years.

RCR failed to put a single car into the Chase for the Sprint Cup -- they were 0-for-4 -- after locking all three of its cars into the playoffs each of the two previous years, and two-of-three in 2006.

The 2010 Sprint Cup season has 16 races to go before "put up or shut up" time -- the Chase -- begins for the seventh time.

And RCR appears to be back on track. Team leader Kevin Harvick, who had the most abysmal 2009 of his three current teammates, has been consistently competitive. Based off a win, four top-five and seven top-10 finishes in 10 races, he leads the standings.

His teammates, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer, are statistically a little behind where they were a year ago at this time; but like Harvick, they've been running better -- particularly if you listen to Burton's crew chief, Todd Berrier, tell it.

"We've been in position to win five races this year," Berrier said. "And we could have won two or three races last year, at the end of the year."

There was a reason for that.

Richard Childress is an involved owner -- and he's not shy about pulling the trigger. Such was the case last fall when, with five races remaining in the season, he mixed up his personnel roster and moved Burton's crew chief, Scott Miller, to competition director.

In Burton and Berrier's case particularly, but now in 2010 across the board, Miller and the rest of the RCR clan appear to have bought into the package.

Stats can be spun to tell anything, but chew on this one. After 10 races this season -- less than a third of the season -- the three RCR cars have almost half as many total wins, top-five and top-10 finishes as they totaled in all 36 2009 races.

Burton likes the atmosphere, and he credits Miller for a lot of it -- of course, after he acknowledges Childress giving Miller a green light.

"Scott's taken his position and run with it and done a great job -- a phenomenal job," Burton said. "Richard has given him the latitude to do that. That's something that is kind of out of character for Richard because Richard wants to be involved in every single thing."

But give credit to Childress for realizing his expanding responsibilities, which includes a winery, a charitable foundation and monitoring four divisions worth of race teams -- which directly involves his family members in the persons of son-in-law and vice president of competition Mike Dillon and his sons, Childress' grandsons Austin and Ty Dillon -- meant he had to relax his iron grip.

"Richard has given Scott a lot of latitude to go off and do things that have really impacted our company in a positive way," Burton said. "He hasn't had many rookie mistakes in his position. That structure and that foundation have really benefited our company a great deal."

In that case, the stats don't lie. And maybe the biggest benefactor, to this point, has been Harvick -- who made sure to credit engineering director Kent Day and other elements of RCR for the resurgence -- but agreed clarifying the path through which Childress has to make decision was huge.

"I don't think it's just Scott -- but Scott in specific takes a lot of stress off of Richard of having to listen to opinions from each different person," Harvick said. "Scott gathers all those opinions and makes his best recommendation to Richard, so it's a much different structure and process than the way it used to work."

"That's what we had hoped [Childress] would do, because he has so many things to do within the company," Miller said. "We just wanted to get some of those things off his plate because it's one of those deals where if you're trying to do everything, it's hard to do anything really good.

• Purchase tickets
• Fantasy Preview
• In the Loop
• NASCAR Says

"What we're trying to do at RCR is isolate job responsibilities and make sure people are doing the right things and what they're supposed to be focused on, rather than doing a million things -- no different for him, or me or the crew chiefs."

Miller, with his clear-headed engineer's background and a lot of experience as both a team engineer and a crew chief, is maximizing that.

"Scott, he can relate to me, he can relate to the crew chiefs [and] he can decipher all the BS before it goes to Richard," Harvick said. "We don't have to go down a road because it was thought to be a good idea on that day. Then you have Kent Day who has done a good job with the engineering group, placing the right people in the right spots to make our simulation and seven posts useful tools that we have and we can actually use them and know what they're doing."

Berrier and Burton -- who paused at Richmond to reflect on their first 15 races together -- perhaps embody the overall scene at RCR, where success appears to be propagating itself this season.

"Working with Jeff has been one of the highlights of my career," said Berrier, who won the Daytona 500 and a then-Busch Series championship with Harvick. "I've enjoyed it. [Burton] works really hard at what he does and he's just a complete team player. He tries as hard as anybody I've ever seen.

"I think we're fast enough and we've got all the things it takes [to win] -- it's just being smart enough to make all the right decisions. I think when you get to do it week-in and week-out and when you're running in contention to win week-in and week-out you can probably make smarter decisions."

Burton said that's what his crew chief's makeup is all about.

"The thing I like about working with Todd the most is his effort -- he accepts no compromise, he accepts nothing but the very best," Burton said. "If there is a question, he goes and answers it; if there is a debate about what is better, he goes and finds the answer -- he leaves no stone unturned. He doesn't look at the clock to decide whether something is right or wrong, his effort is incredible.

"He's extremely smart. From a crew chief standpoint [he can do it all]. Those kinds of people tend to not accept help from around them very well because they would rather do it themselves. Todd has really embraced sort of the new way of doing business by using engineering, using all the design groups, using the fabricators and using the people that can make him smarter.

"That's been really cool to see because that's a transition for Todd not having to do it all by himself. His willingness to accept that: His work ethic, his desire, his dedication -- all those things have just really been impressive to me."

And as much as Miller's impressed, he's enjoying himself, too.

"I like this a lot," Miller said of his current role. "I think it's just like anything else, there's a little bit of a transition period trying to get used to the things that you're not doing; there's certain things about being a crew chief that you miss doing -- but in a nutshell it's the next logical step in the career and it's something I've really embraced and really tried to run with.

"Richard's seeing some things going a little bit better and gaining some confidence, and he's leaning on me more and more for some of those things, and I hope I'm up to the challenge.

"It really is all about the fine-tuning. I think we've really had a good infrastructure at RCR over the years. Right now I feel my biggest task is making sure we're using all of the company's resources in a way that's most efficient and makes our cars run better, every weekend. I'm not sure we've done that in the past."

And as the season unfolds, it almost seems unquestionable that RCR will continue to embrace Miller's mode right back. Chasing the Chase from within will do that.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Related:
• RCR extends 2010 success with strong showing at RIR
• RCR riding wave of optimism
• Childress optimistic Harvick will return to RCR