As the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series begins the long summer stretch, Richard Childress Racing is doing so searching for answers. What started out as a good year with three cars finishing in the top-15 in the Daytona 500 has quickly turned sour, just as Monday’s results at Lowe’s Motor Speedway proved. After struggling in the Sprint All-Star race, each of Richard Childress’ four cars finished 25th or worse in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600.

"It was a long day, that's for sure," Clint Bower, driver of the No. 33 Chevrolet said of Monday’s race. "We had a couple of problems that hurt us but, more than that, it seemed like they came when the weather did and that complicated things for us even more. We need to get things turned around for the Cheerios/Hamburger Helper team. We've had a rough couple of weeks, but these guys keep working hard to turn things around. It seems that if we didn't have bad luck then we'd have no luck at all. We'll get things headed back in the right direction next weekend at Dover."

A rough couple of weeks is quite the understatement. In the last seven events, Bowyer has failed to finish in the top-20. Leaving Martinsville in March, Bowyer was second in points, yet after a 37th and 36th-place finish in the last two events, the driver of the No. 33 has fallen to seventeenth in the standings 109 marks out of twelfth.

Teammate Kevin Harvick has not fared much better in his No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet. After a frustrating 41st-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600, Harvick dropped back to 23rd in the series standings.

"What a day," Harvick said following Monday’s race. "It just wasn't our weekend. I got together with the (No.) 77, like, 10 laps into the race. Then a tire went down and I hit the wall and messed up the fender. Later on, we got a speeding penalty. I was asking myself, 'What's next?' I'm sorry for the fans that they didn't get to see 600 miles, but I'm not sad this day's over."

Harvick’s struggles on Monday continued a larger trend of bad luck and poor finishes. The driver that finished the 2008 season 4th in points has not scored a top-10 finish since Atlanta nine races ago.

"Right now, the main focus is to get solid finishes," Harvick explained. "Right now for us, a solid finish is a top-15 finish. We’ve got to crawl before we walk and get our stuff back together."

Casey Mears’ lackluster season continued Monday as he ran towards the back of the pack most of the day, finishing 33rd. After coming over from Hendrick Motorsports during the off-season, Mears was optimistic heading into 2009 yet little has changed.

"I hate looking at my stats," Mears said with a laugh. "I don’t think my stats tell the complete story of who I am as a driver or who the teams were that I was with at the time. We performed a lot better than what the final results showed."

Unfortunately for Mears, stats are a big part of the game and they do not go in his favor. The driver of the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet has only one top-10 finish this year and has consistently been a 15th-20th-place car. Yet, Mears remains optimistic heading to the Monster Mile, where he has two top-10 finishes.

"Dover is a race track that I really enjoy. It’s fun to drive. You have to get your car right because the track is very finicky," Mears said. "You have a lot of options on the track, as far as lines you can run and different things you can do as a driver that can make a good car better and vice versa. Hopefully, we’ll go up there with a good set up under the Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet and come home with another top-10 or better."

Even Jeff Burton, the team’s leading driver, struggled during the two weeks the series spent in the Queen City. The driver of the No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet finished second-to-last in the Sprint All-Star Race and was the highest finishing RCR car in Monday’s Coca-Cola 600 with a 25th-place run.

"Well, this isn't the way we wanted to end the Coca-Cola 600," Burton admitted. "The Caterpillar Chevy handled okay until I made contact with the wall. That made it really tight and, unfortunately, lost some track position because of it. I wish the rain would have held off so we could fix it and go back racing, but we'll just save it for Dover."

Burton has had success with RCR at Dover in the past, winning the 2006 event there to break a long winless streak. Hopefully the veteran driver can rekindle some of that luck and produce another strong run on the 1-mile concrete oval to help turn this team’s season around.

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