Fan's Eye View ~ Childers Goes From Paint By Number To Picasso12/11/2014 |
At the fall Richmond race in 2013, just about the time that
Clint Bowyer felt that little itch on his arm, on the top of the Pit Box for
the No. 55 Aaron’s Dream Machine sat one Rodney Childers. Or, he could have been. In actuality, two weeks prior to the race at Richmond,
Childers announced that he was leaving Michael Waltrip Racing to become Kevin Harvick’s Crew Chief in the No. 4 car at Stewart-Haas
Racing in the 2014 season. Michael
Waltrip Racing did not hesitate to give Childers an early release, so it was
Scott Miller on the box who ended up telling Brian Vickers to pit with three
laps to go for no apparent reason. Childers had spent the season in a most unique situation
anyway. In a role usually reserved for
start and park teams or teams which are unsure of a direction to take with a
driver, Childers had to prepare a race car for no less than three different
drivers throughout the season. After
three consecutive years providing cars for David Reuitmann,
MWR took a different route and went with a rotating roster of Mark Martin,
Brian Vickers, and of course, Michael Waltrip himself. Childers’ artistry and ability to paint the
picture of a competitive car around multiple drivers paid off in 2013 when Brian
Vickers scored a victory for the team at New Hampshire, with several other
competitive runs throughout the season. Then came Stewart-Haas. Then came
opportunity. Then came an early release,
and Childers was that close to being
involved in the great Chase scandal of Richmond, 2013, which is remembered as a
collective few acts of race track tyranny for which some have still not been
forgiven. Fast forward to the end of the 2013
season. Childers
has been entrenched in the comfy confines of Stewart-Haas Racing for
about ten weeks. Then at a NASCAR test
at Charlotte, Childers and his new driver, Kevin Harvick, had everyone else
stand up and take notice when they won the first 30 lap “race” by an almost
5-second margin. Continue forward and
see that at the Daytona 500, the story may have looked a bit different, and the
Budweiser team could only muster a 38th place start. They did end up 13th in the final
standings however, and then it was onto Phoenix where everything paid off for
everyone. The risk that Stewart-Haas to
put Harvick in the car, and the risk for Harvick of taking the ride with after
spending the first part of his career with Richard Childress Racing, and the
risk for Rodney Childers to leave his long time position at Michael Waltrip
Racing and go with the new tandem of Stewart-Haas and Kevin Harvick. Now, after a five win season which included eight poles in
NASCAR’s new qualifying system, Childers finds himself with a seat at the head
table at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series awards banquet, seated near his
Championship driver. With a steadier
hand, a sturdier easel, and a resilient brush, the landscape that Childers has
now painted is the growing background for future success. The Chase this season took on a most
interesting format, and the rules were fair for all. At the end of the battle, Childers, Harvick,
and the entire Stewart-Haas No. 4 racing team stood atop the rubble and claimed
their prize, completing a masterpiece painting for which a thousand words could
never do justice.
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