Kevin Harvick and Richard Childress Racing Are on the Way Back

When informed on California Speedway's pit road Sunday that two races into the 2010 season he was officially NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series championship leader, Kevin Harvick broke into a broad grin and smirked.

"Now only 34 more to go,'' he shot back after the day's runner-up effort.

Of course, two races hardly make a season and don't typically even begin to foreshadow the championship outcome. Matt Kenseth won the season's first two races last year and didn't qualify for the Chase for the Championship. Jimmie Johnson was ranked 19th after California and still landed his fourth consecutive trophy.

But. ...

After a what-else-could-go-wrong 2009, Harvick, like the entire Richard Childress Racing (RCR) three-team operation, will take what he can get. Harvick is hoping to parlay this encouraging beginning to a proper ending -- a return to the ranks of those in the Chase for the Championship, which is where he spent the 2006-08 seasons.

What's most promising for Harvick is that it's not just him leading this charge back. Both of his RCR teammates,Clint Bowyer (ranked second in points after two races) and veteran Jeff Burton (fifth) are also off to a good start, suggesting the once mighty RCR may be returning to form.

Harvick, who will be a free agent at the end of the year, strongly hinted last season that he would not return to a struggling RCR organization. And he blatantly dodged a question from Darrell Waltrip about his future plans when asked during Sunday's pre-race FOX broadcast.

When asked about his contract situation again Wednesday afternoon during the weekly NASCAR teleconference, Harvick said, "We are just going to go out and do the things that we have been doing and race as hard as we can.''

As far as a possible move, there are a couple prevailing theories. One has Harvick joining good buddy Tony Stewart's team in a third car next year. Another, is that Camping World Truck Series championship team owner Harvick might step up his program and give Stewart a run as a Sprint Cup owner-driver himself.

And, just maybe, Harvick figures out RCR isn't such a bad place to be.

Childress' track record suggests that's certainly a viable option.

After all, it was Childress who took a chance on Harvick in the beginning, and their early partnership couldn't have been more dramatic or rewarding. The question is whether they can persevere through the tougher times.

Who can forget a then 25-year old Harvick jumping into Childress' Chevrolet and winning at Atlanta Motor Speedway in only his third Sprint Cup start, driving the car once piloted by the iconic Dale Earnhardt, who had been killed three weeks earlier in the 2001 Daytona 500.

It was an emotional day and the two have had a good run together since.

But Childress, a middle-of-the-pack driver in the 1970s, is hardly rattled by the cyclic nature of this sport, or an outspoken driver unsatisfied with mediocrity.

There was a time in the late 1990s when people hinted that Childress and Dale Earnhardt had seen their better days after six championships together. The media wondered if Earnhardt shouldn't just retire. They questioned if Childress could keep up with the competition.

Earnhardt went out and won the 1998 Daytona 500 and was second to Bobby Labonte in the 2000 championship.

And Childress has hung in with the next generation of competition. His teams have have had a top-five championship finish in four of the past seven years. He put three drivers in the Chase in 2007 and again in 2008, when Harvick finished fourth, Bowyer fifth and Burton sixth.

But Harvick hasn't won since scoring his dramatic 2007 Daytona 500 victory. And RCR went from having three in the Chase in 2008 to having none last year. Harvick's 19th place finish in the standings was his worst since 2002.

As he has done in decades past, Childress took action, spent money and rallied the troops. Last fall he reorganized the competition department at RCR and it appears the cut-its-losses approach to 2010 may be paying dividends.

"The best thing that came out of that is all the management and structure changes internally,'' Harvick said Wednesday. "As we move forward, you've just got to kind of forget what happened last year to a certain degree, but you have also got to remember it so that you can try to prevent that from happening again.

". . .Just remember what you did to get yourself into that funk and try not to let that happen again.''

It's still too early to know for sure, but maybe Childress' competition overhaul for 2010 is going to be successful. Harvick won the Budweiser Shootout non-points race at Daytona, nearly won his 150-mile Daytona 500 qualifying race and nearly won the Daytona 500. And already, he's one of the betting favorites for this Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Harvick is sure driving like a guy whose contract is up, doing it or an owner eager to prove his time isn't.