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Since midnight Saturday night, celebrations have been going around Welcome's RCR Enterprises offices and shops. It wouldn't surprise me if its owner, Richard Childress, has toasted all three of his NASCAR Nextel Cup teams using some of his delicious Chardonnay or Merlot from nearby Childress Vineyards.
Each of his drivers, Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, are solidly part of the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Chase for the Championship. They sit 10th, 11th and 12th going into New Hampshire this week where the Chase officially begins.
The Chase format is basically a process for becoming a championship contender during the final 10 events of the season. Performance is the key to getting there and only those in the top 12 in points can advance to that special club of drivers eligible for a title run. Among the top 12, NASCAR has closed them to only 60 points between leader Jimmie Johnson to Bowyer, making the playing field very close.
Burton has quietly been moving into championship contention all season, in part by winning at Texas earlier this year while steadily collecting top five and top 10 finishes along the way.
His race at Richmond didn't go as well as planned, but he and his No. 31 team are still in the championship chase.
"Obviously we didn't get done tonight what we wanted to," Burton said after finishing 18th. "We were experimenting a little bit, and it didn't work out for us.
"We're proud that we got all three teams in the Chase. Game on now. It's time to get going, and we certainly need to try to find a way to step it up a little bit if we're going to beat some of these guys. I have a tremendous amount of confidence of what our team can do, and we're just going to go and mash the gas and see what happens. Nobody's picking us to win, which is fine, and we'll be persistent and try to make some good stuff happen."
Seventh-place Richmond finisher Harvick only needed to finish 32nd or better to gain a championship spot.
Harvick survived an overheating problem in his Chevrolet due to grass and dirt being kicked up while trying to avoid an accident. Only then could Harvick breathe a sigh of relief.
"I didn't hit anything. I just went through the grass," Harvick said. "The way these cars are, it's like a shovel with the splitter on the bottom of the car. It just filled the grill up solid, and there was water coming out. Once we got that off, it actually ran cooler than it did the rest of the night."
Bowyer was very close to securing his spot going into Richmond and only had to start the event to get in. His 12th-place finish was shadowed by a spin on lap 202 while racing with Denny Hamlin. The Kansas native can take pride in knowing he was racing for the lead when his black No. 07 Chevrolet broke loose in turn three.
"I'm just kind of bummed out," Bowyer said Saturday night. "I was going to go for it when I showed up here tonight and just went a little too hard."
When asked how it felt to race in the Chase in only his second year, Bowyer replied, "I'm with a good organization and a good race team. (Crew chief) Gil Martin and everybody on the Jack Daniel's Chevrolet do such a good job and give me good race cars so I absolutely can believe it. Gil and everybody worked so hard and everybody's families put a lot of effort into this so I'm really proud to be here."
Next on the list could be a seventh career Nextel Cup championship for RCR Enterprises. As well as these guys are running, I would never count any of them out.
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