Richard Childress Racing was shut out of the championship hunt last season, when all four of its drivers struggled through a winless year.
A slew of changes followed, from personnel and shop procedures to dropping a driver to make it a three-car team. Now, at the midseason mark in the Sprint Cup Series, RCR is NASCAR's most improved team.
Led by current points leader Kevin Harvick and his two victories, RCR has two drivers currently eligible for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. All three would be inside the top 12 had an ill-timed caution not cost Clint Bowyer a win Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway.
Instead, that late yellow as he closed in on the white flag set up a sequence of events that took Bowyer from certain victory to a 17th-place finish while Harvick got the win. Jeff Burton, who led 11 laps, finished fifth to cap what had been a dominating night for RCR.
Where RCR now finds itself is a direct result of the commitment owner Richard Childress showed exactly one year ago.
``He stepped out on a huge limb to spend the money to start over ... halfway through the year, and it's paying off now for us,'' Harvick said.
This time last year Harvick was 26th in the standings, Burton was 15th and Bowyer was 16th. Headed into the 19th race of the season this Saturday night at Chicago, Harvick holds a 212-point lead over Jeff Gordon in the standings, while Burton is eighth and Bowyer 14th - but only 49 points out of the top 12.
``It's pretty remarkable, to tell you the truth,'' Harvick said. ``Richard is the one who pulled all the triggers to make everything happen.''
So who else has made remarkable gains through the first half of this season?
The driver who gets the most attention for his improvement this year is Dale Earnhardt Jr., who cracked the top-12 this week and is up 10 spots from here he was running this time last season.
Receiving much less fanfare, though, is Scott Speed. He was 35th in points at the midway point of last year, and currently sits 24th. But because of the disarray at Red Bull Racing - star driver Brian Vickers is out the rest of the year receiving treatment for blood clots - the team gets more attention for what's not going right than it does for Speed's improvement.
On a broader scale, it appears that RCR and Joe Gibbs Racing have improved their overall organizations to the point that they can now compete with Hendrick Motorsports. Toss Kurt Busch of Penske Racing into the mix, and there are some very serious contenders to Jimmie Johnson's four-year hold on the Sprint Cup.
JGR, with seven wins between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, has at times this season appeared to be the most dominant organization. But Hamlin and Kyle Busch are streaky, and neither has the consistent finishes that Harvick is knocking down.
Kurt Busch has two wins, 11 top-10 finishes and is ranked fourth in the standings. But as the star driver of the only Dodge team, he may not have enough support from his Penske teammates or the manufacturer to mount a serious challenge on Johnson.
And Johnson, by the way, finally silenced that 10-week talk of a slump by winning back-to-back races before he was caught in a late 20-car accident at Daytona that gave him a 31st-place finish. Nobody is counting him out in what's been a year of crossing off goals on his checklist - he won at Bristol for the first time, and his win last month at Sonoma gave him his first road-course victory.
Next up is Chicago, considered crew chief Chad Knaus' ``home track,'' and one of only four active tracks where he's yet to win.
``We have been very close,'' he said. ``Things get away from us. I feel like we've got a good chance there, and certainly hope to (win).''
Among the biggest disappointments this year has been Juan Pablo Montoya, who made his first Chase last season and briefly even flirted with the title. But he's had no luck at all this year and has dropped 10 spots in the standings to 21st.
Tony Stewart had a huge lead in the standings at the midway mark last year, but needed a strong push over the last month to climb to ninth in the current standings. He's not yet running for wins, though. At this point in 2009, he had two victories and an All-Star win.
``It's kind of like last year - we had a great first half of the season, then just kind of fell off. We didn't really feel like we were doing anything different. We just weren't hitting on the things that we needed to in the fall to keep us good,'' Stewart said. ``I think it's kind of worked the opposite way this year so far. We just weren't finding the things to make the car happy. As time is going on, every week we're just learning a little more about what to do to get the feel in the car that I like.''
Stewart-Haas Racing might actually be the most disappointing team so far this season. Ryan Newman is down eight spots in the standings and at 15th in points, needs to make up a lot of ground to make the Chase.
Newman is part of a logjam of drivers fighting for the final few spots in the 12-driver Chase field. Right now, 251 points separate Stewart in ninth to David Reutimann in 17th.
Although the intensity will be increased for everyone, the interest will be on Earnhardt, who can't escape the spotlight as he tries to return to championship contention. Although he's finished 11th or better in the last four races, he was embarrassed that he lucked into a fourth-place finish after struggling through most of Saturday night.
``We're not running good enough to finish fourth, so we're lucky to finish there,'' he said. ``You don't want to make the Chase on pure luck, you know? You want to make it because you ran well.''
Now is the time to do it.
