Childress confident his NASCAR team can dethrone Johnson

Associated Press

WELCOME, N.C.

There’s a sign at the top of the road leading into Richard Childress Racing trumpeting next month’s season-opening Daytona 500.

“Can U Feel it!” it shouts at everyone making the turn onto Childress property.

There’s no mistaking the excitement inside the RCR complex, where one of NASCAR’s storied race teams is certain it can end Jimmie Johnson’s five-year grip on the Sprint Cup championship.

“This year is the year to kick Jimmie off that throne. It’s going to be RCR. I feel certain,” Childress said Tuesday during a stop at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s annual media tour.

It was the loudest shot fired so far this offseason toward Johnson and mighty Hendrick Motorsports, which have been beating up RCR and everyone else in NASCAR for the better part of a decade.

But Childress has poured a seemingly endless amount of resources into his race team, which rebounded from a miserable 2009 season to become NASCAR’s comeback story of the year.

RCR put all three of its drivers in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field, and despite cheating allegations that derailed Clint Bowyer’s title bid, Kevin Harvick went down to the wire with Johnson for the title.

Although Harvick settled for third in the final standings, the overall improvement at RCR was enough to convince everyone the team is capable of continuing its forward progress.

“I’m glad Richard has the confidence to say we can win it — I’d be real nervous if he didn’t,” driver Jeff Burton said. “We believe we can. Other teams do, too, especially this time of year, everybody beats their chest pretty hard.

“But the fact is there are a lot of capable people at RCR who can get it done. There’s something to be learned from coming close and not getting it done.”

It’s been a long time coming for RCR, which won its last Cup championship in 1994 with the late Dale Earnhardt.

The organization thought it was championship-ready in 2001, only to lose Earnhardt in a fatal accident on the last lap of the season-opening Daytona 500.

The decade since has been a trying cycle of ups and downs for Childress, who weathered that awful 2001 season only to see the team’s production fall off, improve, then fall off again.

Adding a fourth team in 2009 stretched the organization too thin, and when all four drivers failed to make the Chase, Childress ordered massive restructuring.