CONCORD, N.C. — Long before Rodney Childers became a championship crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series, he was a late model racer.
The North Carolina native competed in a variety of late model stock car divisions in the Southeast during the 1990s and early 2000s, made a start in the Xfinity Series in 2000 and retired in 2003 to work full time on a NASCAR crew.
Over the next 11 years, Childers’ career progressed from mechanic, to car chief, to crew chief for drivers such as Scott Riggs, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers. But in 2014, Childers accepted a position that became his home over the next decade.
He moved to Stewart-Haas Racing to crew chief for Kevin Harvick and the No. 4 team.
“To have the relationship that I’ve had with Kevin the last 10 years, and to do the things that we’ve done … that’s just something that’s unheard of,” Childers said.
With Harvick’s skilled hands guiding the wheel in competition, Childers led the No. 4 team from the pit box to clinch the 2014 Cup Series championship during the duo’s debut year. Since then, the pairing has been one of the most consistent in series history — an accolade highlighted by their numerous top-10 streaks.
They’ve collected 37 points-paying victories in 332 starts together.
But the decade of Harvick-Childers is coming to an end, as the 47-year-old driver is retiring from the driver’s seat after this season.
Instead, a new era is beginning — and it’s one Childers is looking forward to.
Josh Berry, a well-respected late model wheelman, will be replacing Harvick in the No. 4 next year. Childers, who is a self-proclaimed “Josh Berry fan,” was a major proponent of Stewart-Haas Racing’s decision to hire the current Xfinity Series driver.
“I wish they could all go back through his (Harvick’s) phone and count how many times that I texted him saying if that guy (Berry) could ever get the right opportunity, he’s going to show something,” Childers said. “It’s just cool as crap today to see him up here with us, to be able to go racing with him and to have that same common goal.”
He’s been paying attention to Berry since the driver’s early days at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway, and he’s watched as Berry has turned the turret to become a dominant force both at the track and in other leading pavement series’ — such as the CARS Tour.
“He knew how to race. You could watch from lap one all the way to the end of it, him placing his car in the right place on restarts and figuring out how to drive the car different to make it handle different, and not leaving it all on the team to try to make it better at every pit stop,” Childers said. “He knows how to do all that stuff.”
With their shared background in late model racing, Childers believes the two will be a step ahead when it comes to driver-crew chief chemistry at the track.
“I already think the relationship I have with Josh is probably ahead of where I was when I first met Kevin, just because of talking about late models over the last five years,” Childers said.
Having intelligent conversations about how to make the race car better is one thing the crew chief is confident Berry will be able to handle, due to the 32-year-old’s decades of experience behind the wheel.
While their common ground will certainly ease the transition, the change will still be a major adjustment for Childers, who will go from working with a tenured veteran of the Cup Series to a rookie.
But according to what he heard from Hendrick Motorsports following Berry’s fill-in rides in the No. 9 and No. 48 cars earlier this season, Childers doesn’t foresee it being an issue.
“The first thing they said after his first race was, ‘Holy cow, that guy stays calm.’ And that’s good,” Childers said. “You see some of the guys out there right now, like Larson, he’s just cool as a cucumber the whole race. So, to me, some of that might be refreshing in a way, just to have that new outlook.”