Rodney Childers, one of the most successful and well-respected crew chiefs in the modern days of NASCAR, spent Sunday watching the NASCAR Cup Series event at Talladega Superspeedway from home.
In a move that shocked the NASCAR industry, Childers and Spire Motorsports mutually agreed to part ways last week, ending the championship-winning crew chief’s tenure as shot-caller for Justin Haley after only nine races.
After spending several years as a dominant force in the NASCAR Cup Series with Kevin Harvick and Stewart-Haas Racing, Childers was now relegated to being on the sidelines, rather than on top of the pit box.
When speaking to the media this past weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, Justin Haley, driver of the No. 7 Chevrolet for Spire Motorsports, said simply that it just wasn’t a good fit.
That’s the message that Haley, as well as Spire Motorsports team owner Jeff Dickerson (in an interview with The Athletic), have delivered about the departure, and it’s a message that Childers himself also agrees with.
“Everything was going fine. You could kind of tell after we got racing a little bit that maybe it wasn’t going the way that we all wanted,” Childers said. “You know, and a lot of times, that’s performance-based or that can be how things are going at the shop or how things are going at the racetrack, and what’s the communication like? And just the chemistry of all of it. It’s not one person, it’s not two people, you know it’s 200 people. Just figuring that out as we went.”
But, as Spire Motorsports and Rodney Childers continued marching forward, things didn’t end up getting much better, and that feeling of being off-balance never quite went away, leading to the moment of his departure.
“It finally [reached] a point where they could kind of tell I wasn’t happy, and I could kind of tell that maybe they weren’t happy, and it just started falling apart a little bit,” Childers added. “I could sense it a little bit. Maybe a couple of weeks before, it had kind of [got] quiet around, and anytime it gets quiet, you kind of start wondering.”
Even though the partnership came to an abrupt end after just nine NASCAR Cup Series events, Childers says that he doesn’t believe there is any bad blood between himself and Spire Motorsports.
“They were super good to me while I was there,” Childers said of the Spire team. “They’re good people. They have a good race team. It was fun to be in the shop with the truck guys, and I’m going to miss a lot of those guys over there.”
Though, despite his current employment status, Childers isn’t giving up on being a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief, but it’s all about finding the perfect fit for him.
“I think in my statement, it was not really clear what I wanted, and I want to be clear in that I want to be a crew chief in the Cup Series like I’ve been,” Childers explained. “I want to get past that 700 races [milestone]. I want to get to that 50-win mark. I want to be with a good team, a good driver that can win races. And I want that to be clear. I’m looking forward to figuring that out over the next six months and hopefully get back in Victory Lane.”
As of right now, Childers is 15 starts shy of reaching 700 in the NASCAR Cup Series, and is 10 victories away from reaching the half-century mark. He believes that achieving these landmarks will help make a case for him to reach the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“Well, [the phone has] rung. Less than what I was hoping, I’ll be honest, but you know, it’s early,” said Childers. “I think what happened was a shock to the whole garage, and it’s hard to say what is going to happen.”
Although the 48-year-old crew chief has had the chance to join an organization as a competition director, Childers says he just doesn’t believe that he’s ready to step away from being a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief just yet.
“I had a couple [of] opportunities last year to go after the competition director thing, and I was kind of just really stuck on — I feel like, to one day be in the Hall of Fame, I need more wins than 40,” Childers said. “And, you know, all that kind of stuff means a lot to me. And I want to keep chasing those numbers, and I want to have more poles, and I wanna have more wins and all that.”
At this junction, with all of his recent success, there is no doubt that Rodney Childers is/will be a hot commodity on the market for NASCAR Cup Series teams, as he looks to jump back into the game as a crew chief at NASCAR’s top level.
