Rodney Childers leads Kevin Harvick to win while learning from mistakes

Even though the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet team at Stewart-Haas Racing has had a rough start to the year, they are the first team that can say this confidently – they’re locked in the Chase with two victories.

Childers and team built another fast car last weekend for Kevin Harvick at Darlington Raceway and a call to take four tires near the end of the race paid off as Harvick picked up the win.

“I thought we had a strong car all weekend, so when it comes down to the end like that, I thought the right thing for us was to put four tires on,” Childers commented. “I was sitting there thinking in my head there would be three or four that put two on, and we were right beside the 20 and the 24 on pit road, so I knew that’s what they were going to do.  But I still thought four was the right thing.”

Harvick almost didn’t win as it looked as though Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a good lead coming to the white flag when the caution flew for Kurt Busch’s wreck. However, perhaps Harvick would’ve caught Earnhardt anyway.

“It’s hard to say.  It’s always easy to go back and think about that stuff and what you should have done and shouldn’t have done.  I think we could have won the race on two tires, and we still won it on four,” Childers commented. “Really all that goes down to Kevin and his determination at the end of the race and the guys building the strong race car, and like he said, keeping their heads down and just keep preparing for each weekend.”

It marks Childers’ second “crown jewel” race win as he won the Coca Cola 600 with Brian Vickers as a result of the continued rain fall.

“As young as I am in my career, I’ve been really fortunate,” Childers expressed. “That race in Charlotte for the coke 600, I was lucky it kept raining, and then this year I was lucky that Kevin Harvick wanted me to be his crew chief.  This has been phenomenal for me, and it means a lot.”

A lot of questions surrounded the start of the season with the pairing, but eight races in, the decision seems to be pairing off. Childers and Harvick seem to have great chemistry together that has led to really fast cars so far this year.

However, the pair currently sit 22nd in points as a result of five finishes outside of the top 36 due to mechanical issues and wrecks on track. The race at Darlington didn’t go perfectly smooth, either as there was a pit stop that saw Harvick not get as much fuel as required, setting up the next it stop to have to come sooner than it normally would.

“As far as the fuel issue, it really just came down to the can didn’t plug in right the first time, and once the can doesn’t plug in right the first time, it pretty much becomes a disaster, and panic mode sets in,” Childers explained. “It’s one of those deals where we’re a young team, but we made a mistake, and we switched gas men as soon as it happened.  I was like, we’re not giving this away.  We had somebody different the rest of the race and did an excellent job.

“But the person that made the mistake I support 100 percent.  We’re still a young team and still learning, and that’s something that we’ve just got to work on.”

When Childers joined up with team, he said he predicted that they wouldn’t win a race till June or July. However, here we are in April with two victories. Childers attributes that to hard work so far in building good cars every week and learning together. That bond that they’ve formed quickly certainly has helped made the bad weeks easier to take.

“We’ve had each other’s backs through all of it,” Childers commented. “There’s been other weeks that were tougher than others.  But the thing that’s so great about the team so far is I struggled really bad one week, I’ll say Bristol I struggled to get over.  It was something that we’ve always run good there, and that’s one of the ones I always wanted, and it ended up being a night race at Bristol and I wanted it pretty bad, and it took me until Wednesday to get over it, which is unacceptable.  We need to put things behind us and move on.

“Everybody patted me on the back, and we’ve done that every week.  It’s been a lot of fun.”

Childers added that every thing that they’ve had happen to them so far, they’ve learned from and taken measures so that way it doesn’t happen again later in the season.

Now that they’re locked in the Chase, some people have wondered whether the thought process will change for Childers and Harvick. Perhaps they’ll start trying some things or taking gambles to win races.

Childers states that isn’t the case as he is going to stick with the same attitude that they’ve had all year long so far – try to bring the fastest car to the track, be the fastest car in practice and keep trying to win the races.

“We’ve just got to keep working to make our team better, and I think the way we’ve got to make our team better is to keep bringing good cars and keep trying to win races,” he commented. “We’ve got some things that we need to get better as far as an organization, but all in all, I think we’re just going to keep doing the things that we’ve been doing and focusing on what we can focus on and keep moving forward.”