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Richard Childress Looking To Be One Step Better In 2015

(L-R, back row) Brian Scott, driver of the #2 Chevrolet, Ty Dillon, driver of the #3 Chevrolet, Brendan Gaughan, (front row)Austin Dillon, driver of the #3 Chevrolet, Paul Menard, driver of the #27 Chevrolet, Ryan Newman, driver of the #31 Chevrolet, and Richard Childress, owner of Richard Childress Racing, look on during day 4 of the Charlotte Motor Speedway NASCAR Media Tour.  [Credit: Jared C. Tilton/NASCAR via Getty Images]

 

Charlotte, NC— After falling just short of the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship last season Richard Childress Racing hopes to ride the momentum from 2014 into the new season according to representatives from the team who met with the media on the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom.

“We were one caution flag short of the championship and not just fifty yards, but that is history and we’re looking at the future,” team owner Richard Childress stated, “I think we’ve got some good momentum going with Ryan (Newman) and (crew chief) Luke (Lambert) doing what they did and Austin (Dillon) being a rookie and he and Paul (Menard) were right there up until the last couple of races to get in the Chase. Our goal is just to go out and win races.”

Richard Childress Racing will field three entries in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2015 with every driver from last season returning to their rides. Ryan Newman will pilot the #31 Chevrolet while Austin Dillon begins his second season in the #3 car while Paul Menard returns for another year in the #27 ride. On the Xfinity Series side, RCR will have a total of four entries with Ty Dillon behind the wheel of the #3 car and Brian Scott in command of the #2 entry. Two time 2014 winner Brendan Gaughn returns to drive the #62 Chevrolet and the team plans to field the #33 Chevrolet full time with the driving duties being split between Austin Dillon, Paul Menard and rookie Brandon Jones.

With the new rules changes introduced by NASCAR for 2015, Childress said his organization has not sit still during the off season and changes were made to increase performance this year.

“NASCAR has made a lot of changes this winter with the engines and some aero changes and we feel that we’ve really stepped up to the plate and hired new people and put a lot of new people in place with new technology and bought the right components,” Childress said. “We’ve really beefed up our engineering and we plan on being in a championship run again this year.”

Ryan Newman, who came just short of the championship a year ago, said he’s ready for the increased intensity the current Chase format has brought to the competition.

“My wife got me some brass knuckles for Christmas so I’m kind of looking forward to this year,” Newman joked before reflecting on all the drama that arose from 2014, “I saw potential for it but I didn’t think it was going to explode the way that it did. I think we all kind of saw gun powder laying on the floor but we didn’t know who was going to light it or when it was going to light and how much it was going to go off. I think that every bit of it went off and then some. I thought every part of the Chase was interesting from a dramatic standpoint from Matt Kenseth wanting to throw a punch to us racing our way in and other guys getting beat out. Every aspect of it showed the growth and potential we have for our sport.”

“I think as NASCAR makes the cars more competitive that more weight gets put on the drivers to get each and every inch possible on every restart and to be as crazy as we can without crashing and have the ultimate amount of risk without sacrificing the reward,” Newman continued, “That is on the line more so I think since we have started the double file restarts and the new generation of car which has made the racing all that much more competitive.”

Austin Dillon returns to the famous #3 ride for his second season with crew chief Gil Martin and he feels his solid season a year ago should pay off in 2015.

“I’m back with Gil (Martin) and we’ve made some changes with the team,” Dillon explained, “We’ve got a young team and we’re ready to go and fight hard this year.”

“I’m just looking forward for the opportunity and I think the experience we gained last year where we were able to finish a lot of races was big for our team” Dillon surmised, “Hopefully this year we can capitalize on what we’ve learned and you will see us up front more.”

After beginning to work with crew chief Justin Alexander at the end of 2014, Paul Menard pointed to an engineering based background as a key to communication in 2015.

“What’s kind of nice about Justin’s (Alexander) engineering mentality it’s kind of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ so you kind of get to the point and that’s how we work it,” Menard explained, “We don’t mince words very much.”

“We’ve had some success in the restrictor plate races and while I’m not particularly a fan of plate racing we have seemed to run pretty good there with good cars,” Menard said accessing his team’s abilities in 2015, “The intermediate tracks are kind of our strong suit, our bread and butter, where we’ve had our best runs like the high speed mile and a half and two mile tracks. Short tracks are probably our weakness frankly and that’s somewhere we hope to get better.”

 

 

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