RICHMOND, Va. -- Maybe crew chief Gil Martin summed up the major crew swap his Richard Childress Racing operation had engineered prior to Saturday night's Crown Royal 400.

His driver, Kevin Harvick was wheeling a torn-to-pieces No. 29 Chevrolet around Richmond International Raceway late in the race when Martin keyed his in-car radio button.

“

From qualifying 40-something and ending up where we did was real good and we needed it. All the changes that happened -- to come out of here like this is a real positive for us.

”

-- CASEY MEARS

"I hate to tell you this," Martin said ruefully. "But the only cars faster than you right now are the two leaders."

At the time, that happened to be Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards, two of the sport's toughest competitors.

Or maybe it was crew chief Todd Berrier, the other half of the swap that sent him and the entire crew that had been servicing Harvick's car to the No. 07 team for Casey Mears, where Martin and his boys had placed RCR's Clint Bowyer into the Chase the last two seasons.

Berrier keyed his radio under caution at Lap 309 and calmly told Mears, "We screwed ya."

"We had to put scuffs on there, not new tires," Berrier explained. "We had a set of [new] stickers, but we didn't get 'em aired-up in time. You've been gettin' it, so just keep after it."

Maybe the sum came from the fact that the worst man in RCR's four-car ensemble on an absolutely hairy night at RIR that tied the track record for cautions with 15, was 18th- place Bowyer. He was a consistent top-20 car, but was never able to advance much farther.

In the end, after he took stock of the weekend Monday morning, Childress was pleased.

"We made changes to the crews to help those two teams but also to help RCR overall," Childress said. "There was a lot of extra work getting stuff done for Richmond and everyone pitched in to make sure it was as seamless as possible. We've also been doing some things that are creating some small gains for us on the performance side. I've been pushing everyone hard and I'm very proud of the effort they've made."

The team's current leader in the standings, Jeff Burton, was his consistent, capable self, with a fiery twist. Burrton's crew chief, Scott Miller, called for a tire stop under caution with more than 50 laps to go and Burton roared to third behind victorious birthday boy Kyle Busch.

Afterward, Burton spoke of his team but might've been summing up the can-do attitude prevalent these days at RCR. (Continued)