Another team looking to turn the wick up on the competition this week at New Hampshire is the three car team of Richard Childress Racing. Despite having all three cars in the top-13 in the series standings, the RCR brigade has hit a bit of a slump in the early summer months. Heading to a track where each of the team's three drivers has had success, things should be looking up.

So far this season Jeff Burton has been the top dog of the RCR bunch. Through sixteen races thus far, Burton has failed to finish worse than 15th. His win at Bristol - with teammates Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer right behind him - proved RCR was once again a contender for the championship. The veteran driver led the standings for four weeks and has remained in second behind Kyle Busch since leaving Richmond.

The driver of the No. 31 Chevrolet has been able to use consistency to stay in touch with the youngster Busch and is headed to a track he has tasted success at. Burton - who will turn 41 years-old on Sunday - has four wins at the magic mile and has been known to stink up a race or two at the New Hampshire track.

"I certainly have high hopes going there," Burton explained. "I'm real comfortable with the race track, but at the same time, we've haven't won a race there in years and we haven't had the success that we need to have there. We tested at Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago and worked pretty hard learning more about the new car. We're also taking a car that has been very good to us so I'm going into this weekend being optimistic."

Clint Bowyer is also hoping to rekindle some of that winning spirit at New Hampshire. The driver of the No. 07 Jack Daniel's Chevrolet turned heads last year when he not only qualified for the Chase, but dominated the first race at New Hampshire. This season, Bowyer got off to a bit of a slow start, but quickly picked it up. However, since his win at Richmond in May, Bowyer has dropped from 4th in the standings back to 10th. Heading back to the track where he scored his first win and coming off a 4th-place finish in Infineon, Bowyer appears optimistic.

"Loudon has been good to me. I really, really like that race track," Bowyer said. "I like that style race track. It's not just New Hampshire in particular, I like the short tracks. The mile race tracks and tracks that are close to that size - I just enjoy that type of racing. Since last fall, anytime anyone asks about my favorite race track, I tell them New Hampshire. How can I not? That's where I got my first win. Hopefully, we can go back there this weekend and be as fast as we were last time. I'm sure everyone else has gotten better since then but we're hoping the same package we ran in September will be competitive again this Sunday and we can race for another win."

For Kevin Harvick the intensity is starting to pick up. What was shaping up as a great run on the road course in Sonoma last week quickly went away late in the race when Harvick locked up the brakes, collected Jamie McMurray, Tony Stewart and Ron Fellows. The late-race incident ruined a potential top-5 run and instead forced the No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil team to settle for a 30th-place finish. The disappointing run was also a huge blow to the team in terms of points.

Leaving the west coast, Harvick sits in 13th-spot just two points out of 12th. With only ten races remaining before the Chase begins, Harvick will have to look for that consistency he enjoyed at the outset of the season. Much like his RCR teammates, Harvick has also tasted sweet success at New Hampshire. In fourteen tries at the Magic Mile, Harvick has one win, one pole, three top-5s and eight top-10s.

"We had a lot of success at New Hampshire last season," Harvick pointed out. "Our flat-track program has been really good over the past few years. Richmond, Loudon and Phoenix have been places that have been really good to us. We look forward to going to New Hampshire every year and this year is no different. We enjoy the race track since they put the progressive banking in. Since the progressive banking, you can race side-by-side and pass people and do the things you need to do to get toward the front."

Although always a concern, Harvick explained that his situation in the standings has no real affect on his outlook. "It doesn't really matter," says Harvick, "you just race as hard as you can every week. We have had seven or eight bad weeks where we have crashed constantly, ran out of gas at Phoenix, we just have had a lot of things go wrong. Nothing you can do about it, you just go out and go as fast as you can."

Expect these RCR cars to go out and go fast this weekend at Loudon. This track has been known to produce a winner or two from the Childress brigade - Childress actually has three wins at New Hampshire; Robby Gordon (2001), Harvick (2006) and Bowyer (2007) - and Burton is none too shabby himself. Often overlooked as an organization this three car team is one of the biggest threats to take the Chase by surprise, yet if that is going to happen consistency needs to be the name of the game.