Is NASCAR's Big Four becoming the Big Three? Or are the Childress guys just trying not to beat themselves?

  

  
Kyle Busch (C) stalks Childress men Jeff Burton (L) and Clint Bowyer (R) in the final miles of the Shelby 427 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   LAS VEGAS
   Has car owner Richard Childress' operation hit a pot hole on the stock car tour highway?
   Obviously, and his guys realize it.
   Now how long it may take to get back on track, well, that remains to be seen.
   Usually when an outfit gets behind in this sport, it takes months to get back up to speed…..and that's hoping that rivals have gotten so far down the road you'll never catch them anyway.
   Fortunately for the Childress men, rivals at Joe Gibbs', Rick Hendrick's and Jack Roush's have shown some weaknesses too.
   But first, it's clear the Childress bunch needs more speed.
   Toyota's Kyle Busch, even though running an old-style motor (after problems with the 2009 trick model), blew by both Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer too easily down the stretch to win Sunday's Shelby 427.
   And Burton and Bowyer didn't seem in a very good mood afterwards, even though Burton said, "after last week (a miserable run at California), that felt like a win. 
   "Got lapped three times last week, and finished third this week and led a bunch of laps. 
   "I'm not real sure how we do that, but we did it."
   

  

  
Jeff Burton: A need for speed? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  
Tires were an issue for teams – but a good issue, for a change. After a season where Goodyear too often seemed out to lunch, the Akron engineers appear right on their game now.
   That's good, of course, if you – like these drivers – remember the problems last year at Vegas and Atlanta.
    Goodyear's new tires here worked well….and crew chiefs and drivers had to figure out how to manage them. Just like the good old days.
   Kyle Busch, for example, was good on fresh rubber; Burton was best on old stuff.  
   Translated: Burton would like long greens, Busch would like shorter sprints.
   Check the history books and call your plays. But the playbook here certainly didn't call for 14 cautions. That's a record.
   And many of those cautions were simply for driver mistakes. 
   Even Jimmie Johnson conceded as much. The three-time champ, after botching a pit stop, started over-driving and smacked the wall.
   Jeff Gordon too. He also blew a pit stop, blew a tire in the process, and was lucky not to get clobbered by others out on the track.

   Burton, since winning last fall at Charlotte, has been in something of a funk. Even teammate Kevin Harvick's performance at Daytona didn't perk up the Childress operation. And last week's fluke engine problem – an oil filter puncture that triggered his crash – didn't help.
   And while Bowyer and Burton did run 2-3 Sunday, they flat got beat….by a guy who wasn't at his peak by any means.
   That should be a wakeup call.
   "The hounds were coming, they were barking at the door," Burton said, referring to Busch, and perhaps Ford's surprising Bobby Labonte too.
    "We were racing for second…but we were racing for the win too -- I mean if you put yourself in position, you never know what can happen. 
    "There one lap Kyle got pretty loose off two, opened the door for us.
    "But he was fast, obviously."
    "He didn't like make some magic move, he just drove under us," Bowyer said. "Their cars are really fast on new tires. That's where they've got us."
   The post-race analysis after California, down in Welcome, N.C., wasn't pretty, Bowyer conceded: "It took Richard at least a good two and a half days, probably the whole week, to get over it.
    "I was trying to get him over it.  But I stayed on the other end of the house and let him yell for a while."
     And the Childress crews opted for "big changes" here, Burton said.
    "I'm proud of our team for not just sticking their head in the sand and saying 'It's going to be okay,' but trying to make it okay…of not being afraid to admit 'Hey, we might have done something wrong.'
    "You'd be amazed the number of people in this business who will stick to something even though it's not working, because 'it ought to work.'
     "Our guys said 'To hell with that. It didn't work. We've got to start over.'
   

   

   
So why didn't these two, Jeff Burton and teammate Clint Bowyer, beat Kyle Busch? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)