Rodney Childers is amongst the first to clock in every morning at JR Motorsports and amongst the last to clock out several months into the next chapter of a no-doubt NASCAR Hall of Fame career.
That’s how you know this is working out for the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion crew chief now tasked with leading a No. 1 car split between Carson Kvapil and Connor Zilisch. After spending most of last season on the outside looking in following his departure from Spire Motorsports, Childers wasn’t sure he would find this kind of passion and motivation again.
“The biggest thing about being at JRM is the way it operates,” Childers told Motorsport.com on Friday. “I feel at home and I wake up every morning excited. I’m still about the first one there and the last one to leave and have a lot of ideas and thoughts about how to make things better.
“I don’t know what anyone else would say, but I do feel like I have made the whole place better, and that’s important to me. That’s what my main goal was, not to just make the No. 1 car run good, but to make the whole organization better with a lot of small details that some people don’t think matter.
“But to have five wins in a row, and to see the smiles on Dale and Kelley’s face every week, and everyone in the building, that’s really important to me.”
So Childers will be pleased to learn that others in that building indeed do feel as though the addition has been significant. For example, Justin Allgaier is leading the championship with three wins paired with Andrew Overstreet but was quick to praise the entire group — including the 40-time winner at the highest level.
“I think anytime you’re on the Cup side, and you understand the Cup process and details, I think there are a lot of things on the O’Reilly Series side that we don’t have access to,” Allgaier said. “Whether it’s details, personnel, data or manufacturer stuff, Rodney has seen it all and been ultra-successful at the highest level for a long time, you don’t see it a lot, that guy coming back down and bringing all that knowledge with him.
“It’s the same as when you see Cup drivers come down and race here. Yes, they are ultra-talented, no question, but they also can gather way more information and a lot higher sampling rate.”
He’s speaking from experience because he’s now that guy doubling his seat time and download bandwidth driving the No. 48 for Hendrick Motorsports until Alex Bowman can return.
“So, a guy like Rodney, who has done it all and seen it all, he brings a competitiveness and a willingness to say good enough is never good enough, right,” Allgaier added.
He said the same can be said of Overstreet, Mardy Lindley and Phillip Bell too, that everyone in the building is pushing each other and that Childers has simply elevated the bar within JRM.
“I’m super proud of that,” Allgaier said. “That’s what you’re looking for and as a company, when you have that, we better make the most of that opportunity. Andrew has done a good job of that.
“We’ve always had good people and good tools around us that we’re able to build from, and I do think Rodney has been great, but it’s just elevated the whole company and each of us are reaping the benefits of that.”
To wit, Kvapil is still seeking his first career victory but has been right there in the mix with Allgaier for wins and arguably should have outdueled the No. 7 at Phoenix but didn’t nail the last restart.
So on one hand, the pressure is mounting but there’s also confidence at the two-time CARS Tour champion could win on any given Saturday when he’s driving the No. 1.
“I think Rodney coming on board has been huge for me,” Kvapil said. “Not just in the aspect that the cars are fast but he’s just a good leader for the whole team. Everyone loves him. I don’t think I have met one person so far that dislikes Rodney Childers.
“When people feel that way about you, they give you 100 percent. If I make a mistake, I feel bad because what it makes Rodney feel, if that makes sense. He’s just a good leader and everyone on this 1 team, drivers, road crew, we all want to do our best for him.
“So our cars are really fast and we’re running in the top-5, but top-5s aren’t great days for us. We should be top-three.”
Childers says part of his role with Kvapil, especially as he nears his first win at this level, is not over-coaching him. The 49-year-old says he motivates through conviction and not heavy-handedness.
“The biggest thing to me, in talking to him over the winter, was that Carson was overthinking everything,” Childers said. “He had like information overload. I think they were throwing too much at him, telling him how to drive every lap.
“I told him I’m not going to tell him how to drive of SMT that isn’t always very good. He got here because he knows how to drive. It’s up to us to give him the car he wants to drive. I say it all the time, it goes back to what Kevin (Harvick) always said about how you can’t drive a slow car fast. He hasn’t had slow cars but it’s my job to make the car faster. We’re going to win because we gave him the fast car and it’s going to come together on the day he has that and everyone executes.”
Again, all told, Childers feels at home at JR Motorsports.
It’s not exactly home like Stewart-Haas Racing was or even last year in Late Model Stock Cars with Kevin Harvick Inc. but this new home has a little bit of everything he was doing before.
“It’s different,” he said. “There are some weeks this feels like old Cup racing and there’s some weeks we feel like we’re ARCA Racing in the sense that it’s second fiddle and you feel like people aren’t paying as much attention. But there are weeks where it feels like Cup racing back in the day and that’s so much fun.
“I just have really enjoyed being around Carson and I love his personality and the way he grew up, the way he thinks, and he reminds me of me. He fits our team really well. We’ve ended up with a great race team … and we have speed. We’ve qualified on the front row three of the first six races or something like that.
“Everyone is doing a great job and hopefully we can get one here before long.”
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