That's right, you Roush slut. Read it and weep.
Pretty sweet watching both the Busch boy's doing face plant's today, btw.
April 1, 2005 7:30 pm EST Childress in control
By Jerry Bonkowski, Yahoo! SportsChildress (right) with Harvick. (AP)
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Richard Childress can relate to being a bull rider.
When you keep getting thrown off, sooner or later you realize it's time to grab the bull by the horns and show him who's boss.
After the National Stock Car Racing Commission earlier this week denied Childress' appeal of crew chief Todd Berrier's suspension for cheating, Childress got mad.
Now he's going to do something about it.
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For all the critics who have blasted the entire RCR organization for lack of performance in recent years, the man who signs the checks made it very clear Friday that he's reasserting his control starting this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
"I think [the denied appeal] pissed him off more than it did anything," RCR driver Kevin Harvick said. "It took the fire to a different level."
In a highly unusual move, Childress will sit atop Harvick's pit box for Sunday's Food City 500. While he'll leave much of the calling of the race to interim crew chief Scott Miller, make no mistake about it – if RC sees something he doesn't like, he's going to make his voice heard.
Loudly.
"I'm going to be right there next to Scott and maybe Kevin can hear me scream a time or two," Childress said Friday at Bristol.
"I'm doing it more to show my organization how much I care about it, how I want to get this thing back on the right road," Childress added. "I want to light some fire. I want to get this team back in the winner's circle."
It's not surprising that Childress is taking such a step. What is surprising is how long it took – and the circumstances that led him to Friday's proclamation.
From 1984 through 1994, Childress was the most dominant and successful owner in Winston Cup competition. His partnership with the late Dale Earnhardt produced six championships.
That reign also made both men very wealthy, elevating them to being two of the most powerful figures in NASCAR history.
And that may be where the rub lies.
The more successful Earnhardt and Childress became, and the more wins they amassed together, the easier it was to become complacent and let control slip out of their fingers – either intentionally or unintentionally. In particular for Childress, he began delegating more authority to underlings as he became involved in other aspects of his multimillion-dollar business.
"There's a lot of responsibility with being a team owner and supporting all of your race teams," Harvick said. "That's the only reason he began stepping down to begin with."
Delegating ultimately backfired. Instead of leading to more success, it had exactly the opposite effect. The team has not won a championship since Earnhardt's seventh and last in 1994. Since then, it has won a total of 20 races, but only seven since Earnhardt was killed on Feb. 18, 2001.
Contrast that to the years Earnhardt was winning championships; he won 54 races during that same 10-year span.
But NASCAR is forever changing and evolving. You're only as good as your last race. And in recent years, Childress' teams, which have had their moments, have also had a lot of not-so-good races.
While the seeds for Friday's announcement were planted beginning last season, it was the denial of Berrier's appeal earlier this week that caused Childress to go from reactive to proactive.
"He's really been trying to make sure everything is going as good as possible," Harvick said. "Richard's been around this sport for a long time, things have changed a lot, but he's ready to go and that fire rolls right down the hill to the rest of us."
Harvick likes – and is no stranger to – having Childress atop the pit box. RC parked himself there almost the entire 2001 season after Harvick replaced Earnhardt in the RCR stable.
"With Todd being gone, and Richard being as gung-ho as ever, I think it'll be good for us," Harvick said. "He'll bring another perspective to the pit box."
Not lost on Childress is the fact that competitors Roush Racing and Hendrick Motorsports have pulled away to the head of the NASCAR class in recent years while his teams have struggled to keep up.
"It's like when Dale and I were so dominant for years and when Jeff Gordon had his great years and stuff," Childress said. "That's kind of the cycle we're in, all the way back to the Petty days. Right now it's Roush and Hendrick, but we're going to be back there racing hard."
And that, the boss says emphatically, is no bull.
