Harvick

	Gordon

First of all, Kevin Harvick clinched the 2001 NASCAR Busch Series championship Saturday at North Carolina Speedway, making RCR the first NASCAR organization to win championships in Winston Cup, Busch and Truck Series competition. What's more remarkable about Kevin's feat is that he did it while competing full-time in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, often times going back and forth from track to track in one weekend. Plus, he's still in the running to finish the Winston Cup season in the top-10 in the standings.

Another piece of news came out of North Carolina Speedway last week. I have been moved into the position of crew chief of the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet team for the remainder of the season and for next year. I had served as a consultant to the Lowe's team since mid-season and had developed a relationship with the guys and with Robby Gordon. I was also Robby's crew chief for the three races he drove the No. 21 Rockwell Automation/Brant Motorsports Chevrolet in the Busch Series this year. I've worked with the No. 21 team since late in the 2000 season and am really looking forward to some good runs with the Lowe's bunch.

Royce McGee, who led the No. 31 team all season, has been promoted to Winston Cup Shop Manager. RCR's three Winston Cup teams are going to be in one building next year and Royce will oversee the entire three-team operation, hopefully making Bobby Hutchens' job a bit easier. Royce has already gotten started on that monumental task and is really making things happen for us.

The No. 31 Lowe's team witnessed the ups and downs of racing the past two weeks, as did all of Richard Childress Racing. Neither the No. 31 nor the No. 29 teams had stellar performances in Sunday's Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400, but our weekends didn't start off much better, either.

Coming off a season-high seventh-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway last week, Robby and the Lowe's team checked into Rockingham on Friday with hopes of continuing with the momentum gained in Phoenix. When practice began Friday morning, Robby said the Lowe's Chevy was loose exiting the turns. We put a spring rubber in the left rear and added a round of wedge but the car was still loose on the next run. We kept making chassis adjustments that made the car handle a bit better for Robby but it became a little tight in the middle of the corners.

Qualifying rolled around and Robby made his two laps around the track, saying the Lowe's Chevrolet was loose all around the track. We qualified in the 27th starting position.

We put the car in race trim for Saturday morning's practice and set out to learn how it would handle on long runs. Robby said it was pretty good but a little tight. We made some chassis adjustments that seemed to help a bit and then got ready for the final practice, our "Happy Hour" session, an hour later. When Happy Hour got underway, Robby told us the car was a little tight in the middle of the corners. We continued to make changes to improve the handling condition but it kept on getting tighter. The problem we encountered during that practice was that the track was getting tighter as the morning went on. We kept plugging away and ended up posting the fifth-fastest lap of the final session.

Needless to say, when the green flag waved Sunday to begin the 393-lap event, we thought we'd have a top-10 run if we could stay out of trouble and play our cards right. But that wasn't to be. As was the case with many teams, the Lowe's team fought a tight-handling car from the beginning of the race because, just like in Happy Hour, the track continued to tighten up.

The race had only a total of two caution flags, a record-low for a Winston Cup event at Rockingham. The long, green-flag runs made it nearly impossible for teams to pit when necessary to make chassis adjustments, leaving them to wait it out on the track with ill-handling cars and pit under green. Green-flag pit stops don't permit crews enough time to make significant chassis adjustments but force them to resort to quicker, more conventional changes to the car. Many teams, Lowe's Racing included, lost laps on the track because their cars weren't handling well enough to maintain lap times with the leaders, but they couldn't pit as often as they wanted to make the needed adjustments.

We made all sorts of changes to the Lowe's Chevrolet, predominantly raising the track bar and taking wedge out of the car to loosen it up for Robby. Some of those changes helped him a tiny bit, but nothing significant enough to make the car easier to drive. We just couldn't figure out why the car could be so good in Happy Hour and then be exactly the opposite in the race. We're working on getting an answer to that question right now -- checking it out to make sure nothing broke on the car we wouldn't have been able to detect during the race.

But Robby did a good job of hanging onto the car and fighting hard to control it for the entire race. We finished in the 37th position, which we're obviously disappointed with. But that beats finishing dead last after wrecking your car and having to rebuild it later.

It appears Hurricane Michelle is going to spare the Miami area and we'll get to race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday. Jeff Green will drive the Lowe's Chevrolet this weekend because Robby is competing in Friday's legendary Baja 1000 in Mexico. He's won that race twice and had planned to race in it before he ever climbed into the Lowe's Chevrolet.

We tested at Homestead two weeks ago with Jeff and made some significant headway with our car. We'll miss Robby this week and all the momentum we've been gaining as a team, but we are 100-percent confident Jeff will do an awesome job for us and hopefully help us pick up a couple of spots in the standings.