An unforeseen struggle for usually steady RCR team (cont'd)

"I don't believe we're behind in one area. I think we've gotten a little behind in a lot of areas," Burton said. "One of the things that was clear to us coming into this year and last year, and I openly talked about it, is we were on the verge of not being good enough last year. We had one of two ways to go -- we could either improve, or we couldn't improve.

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"We worked very hard to improve, but we started the year out and the changes that we made we haven't improved. We were able to take that assessment really early, and now we're trying to do things differently and we're trying to get better during the year where some people got better during the winter. We just made some decisions that weren't ultimately the correct decisions. Wasn't because we weren't working, it wasn't because we weren't trying, but we just made some decisions that didn't work. Now we have to look at every department and try to figure out how to do every category better."

Childress said his team didn't loaf during the offseason. "Only two or three cars outran us regularly, and we did everything we could this winter to try and come back and beat everybody," he said. But with sanctioned testing banned because of economic reasons, many of those changes could be verified only on the simulator, and not on the race track. Burton said the testing regimen that RCR undertook after the 2007 season was one reason the organization as a whole was so strong last year.

"I believe that one of the things that hurt us is not testing," Burton said. " We tested a lot. [We] spent a lot of time testing, and I think that we got a lot of benefit out of that. We may not have been as prepared as a lot of teams without being able to test."

And then there's race-day strategy. Given how difficult it can be to overtake the leader in the current Sprint Cup, Childress said many teams have gambled on pit stops in order to improve track position. That's one thing RCR historically hasn't done, but may have to consider given its current situation.

"A lot of it is just making some choices on track position that got us at the end of the day," Childress said. "Track position is so big today, and you've got to gamble, and we've always been a pretty conservative company, and I think we're just going to have to gamble a little more on track position."

Meanwhile, the Chase now looms only 11 races away, and the possibility exists that no RCR driver will be in it. For now, Burton is hanging on, although he leads 13th-place David Reutimann by just three points and 14th-place Juan Montoya -- a past winner on the Infineon Raceway road course, which the circuit visits this week -- by 43. Bowyer is still in striking distance, 100 points out of Chase position. Mears, 287 points back, and Harvick, 349 out, are admittedly long shots at best.

"I feel good about Clint, for sure," Childress said. "The other two are going to take some really strong work and some luck and some good finishes. It's not out of the equation. But pretty soon, a couple of more races, if you're not back up within a couple of hundred points, it's pretty tough."