On Wednesday (April 23), news broke that Rodney Childers, a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief with 40 wins and the 2014 championship under his belt, will part ways with Spire Motorsports.
Childers signed with Spire following Stewart-Haas Racing’s closure, and he had been the crew chief for Justin Haley and the No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro for the first nine races of the 2025 season.
The news sent shockwaves through the NASCAR community, which was in the midst of the lone off week for the Cup series through the end of the season. The writers here at Frontstretch had their own varying opinions as to whether the move was a good decision or not.
Childers Deserved a Full Season with Spire
Rodney Childers, a championship-winning crew chief with Kevin Harvick at now defunct Stewart-Haas Racing, is one of the top-rated crew chiefs in the entire garage area.
When the move was announced last year that Childers was moving to Spire to be crew chief for Haley and the No. 7 team, I thought right away that this was going to be the perfect combination as the 2025 season unfolded, as Spire sent shockwaves through the NASCAR garage by securing the services of a crew chief of his caliber.
Additionally, bringing in a veteran leader in Michael McDowell to help mentor younger teammates Carson Hocevar and Haley gave Spire Motorsports more veteran leadership at the Cup level — something that the team didn’t have when it first entered the Cup ranks.
Signing Childers over the offseason was one of the more underrated moves due to the championship pedigree coming to Spire. Anytime you pair a championship-winning crew chief with a young driver like Haley, expectations grow exponentially. In Haley’s case, along with the offseason changes to Spire’s Cup program, a playoff appearance seemed like the most reasonable outcome.
As previously stated, Childers is a natural leader and one of the most talented crew chiefs in the sport, which made him the perfect find for a team on the rise like Spire — an organization that someday could become an elite Cup team in the future.
Going back to his days with Michael Waltrip Racing in the mid 2000s, Childers had solid seasons with former driver David Reutimann, as the pair won their first Cup race together in the rain-shortened 2009 Coca Cola 600. That season was statistically one of Reutimann’s best to date as he nearly made that year’s Chase, ultimately coming up just short of making NASCAR’s playoff field. Upon making the transition to SHR, something clicked right away between Childers and Harvick that carried them to their first Cup title at season’s end in 2014.
Yes, Haley is no Harvick when it comes to his age, but his on-track experience should speak for itself. Bringing on Childers to call the shots this season should’ve been enough to boost the overall performance of the No. 7 team, considering where this group was at times in the past few seasons with Corey LaJoie behind the wheel. Furthermore, a veteran crew chief is often times the missing piece for a team seeking to make strides to improve on track performance.
In 2025, Childers and Haley only had nine races together, a very small sample size for a driver and crew chief pairing in NASCAR in today’s day and age. There’s been crew chief and driver changes in plenty of off seasons, but this shocking decision for Spire to mutually part ways with one of the best crew chiefs of today’s NASCAR Cup Series doesn’t make sense to me. – Christopher Hansen
Childers Is Making The Right Move To Leave Spire
Rodney Childers has been around racing for a while.
He was a WKA Karting state and national champion before moving on to Late Model Stock racing. He competed in the ASA and X-1R Pro Cup Series and ran one race in the Xfinity series in 2000. In 2003, he decided to become a mechanic. He originally worked for Team Penske, then MB2 Motorsports where he first served as crew chief for Scott Riggs in 2005. He followed Riggs to Evernham Motorsports in 2006 and then went to work for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2009.
He eventually ended up with SHR in 2014, and that is where he partnered up with Harvick. The two won the 2014 Cup title and then had a runner-up finish, followed shortly by four third-place championship finishes in six years. His last two efforts have been the final season of SHR with Josh Berry, and then a short period with Spire this year before deciding to part ways this week.
All of this history is laid out to show the knowledge base that Childers has amassed over his career. He has been part of championship organizations, some organizations that were in total disarray and others that were built from the ground up around him.
Childers knows what it takes to be a successful team at the top level of stock car racing. He has amassed 40 wins in 685 races over his 21-year crew chief career. Sometimes, when you end up in a organization, it just isn’t a good fit. At this point, we don’t know what the internal dynamics of Spire Motorsports are, but we do know that it was simply not a good fit for Childers this year.
At 48 years of age, Childers is closer to the end of his motorsports career than the beginning. With the limited time he has left, he doesn’t want to waste it in an unhealthy situation. He put out a statement on Wednesday that thanked everyone for their support, but noted that some things just don’t work out, and this was a situation that was not working out for either side of the partnership. He noted that he is not retiring, but taking a step back to focus on family and friends while he waits to see what racing offers him next.
There are numerous things that could come Childers way in the very near future. There is no doubt that RCR could use some direction in their organization, for instance.
Sammy Johns is the operations director, and Keith Rodden is the competition director. Childers would be a great addition in a position similar to Tony Gibson’s role at SHR late in his career as a production director. He would focus on car production and make sure that everything coming out of the shop is identical and at the optimum level before the crew chiefs put on their final touches. It was an outstanding approach for SHR, and Childers could bring a great bit of expertise to a position like that at RCR.
There are other positions within the garage that could easily benefit from Childers’ years of experience.
There could be a very easy transition to one of the top teams in the sport to potentially help out with Chase Elliott, who has seemed to be a step behind his teammates this year. After all, he has won one race since the start of 2023. A move to a driver who is 29 years old and should be moving into the absolute prime of his career could easily set up Childers for a strong run for years, similar to what he achieved with Harvick.
One final thing that could fall into Childers lap is a job with NASCAR. Remember how Gary Nelson was one of the biggest pains in NASCAR’s behind when he was a crew chief? He played the gray area as good as most any other crew chief in history. Eventually, NASCAR decided there wouldn’t be anyone better to police cheating in the sport than a guy who pushed the rule book as hard as anyone in the garage. Childers could very easily slide into the head technical inspector role with the sanctioning body and keep tabs on all of his former competition.
Wherever Childers ends up, there is little doubt that he’ll be successful. While he would have liked Spire and his time with Haley to have been more formidable, it just wasn’t meant to be. Something will open up soon for Childers, and someone else will slot into his role with Spire. There are great things coming down the pipe for Spire that Childers had a hand in, and he’ll appreciate whatever the team does with them. At the same time, he’ll take his talents elsewhere, and it will be a healthier situation for him and the team that he joins. – Mike Neff
What is it that Mike Neff doesn’t do? Mike announces several shows each year for the Good Guys Rod and Custom Association. He also pops up everywhere from PRN Pit Reporters and the Press Box with Alan Smothers to SIRIUS XM Radio. He has announced at tracks all over the Southeast, starting at Millbridge Speedway. He's also announced at East Lincoln Speedway, Concord Speedway, Tri-County Speedway, Caraway Speedway, and Charlotte Motor Speedway.