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By Lydia Mee
Sports Contributing Writer
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Championship-winning NASCAR crew chief Rodney Childers, who worked with Justin Haley and the No.7 team, has broken his silence about his abrupt exit from Spire Motorsports.
The team, co-owned by Jeff Dickerson, announced last week that they had parted ways with Childers after just nine races. Dickerson stated at the time:
"NASCAR is an ever-evolving sport and the path to improvement isn't always comfortable.
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"The break in the Cup Series schedule gave us a chance to evaluate where we are as a program. We took the opportunity to discuss the best paths forward for everyone involved and the team and Rodney agreed that it would be best for us to part ways.
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"Rodney has worked at the highest level of our sport for 20 years, and he knows what it takes to win championships. With that in mind, we collectively acknowledged challenges with the team dynamic.
"Having the right combination of talent is just as important as the results on track. As we move in a new direction it is not lost on us that Rodney has been an invaluable asset to our organization, as he will continue to be for others in this sport."
Rodney Childers breaks his silence
Now, in conversation with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Childers has opened up on his unexpected departure.
"Going into it, I was super excited about going there," he explained.
"They had treated me really well. Our announcement last year [of his hiring] was big, and there was a lot of excitement around it. We had a great off-season. I felt like we had so much fun in the offseason... our equipment looked nice, we had a ton of really good guys come into the building, we were making, what I thought, was gains on the cars and just making them look better and nicer and lighter and all those things.
"Really, everything was going fine. You could kind of tell after we got racing a little bit that maybe it wasn't going the way that we all wanted, and a lot of times that's performance-based or that can be how things are going at the shop or how things are going at the racetrack, and what's the communication like, and just the chemistry of all of it. It's not one person, it's not two people, it's 200 people, and just figuring that out as we went."
He added:
"I think it finally came to a point where they could kind of tell I wasn't happy, and I could tell that maybe they weren't happy.
"It just kind of started falling apart a little bit, and I could sense it a little bit maybe a couple of weeks before that. It started getting quiet around there, and anytime it gets quiet, you start wondering.
"Overall, it was just one of those things that just wasn't working, and they're the type of team that is willing to pull the trigger, and a lot of teams don't. They're willing to take that chance... It doesn't bother me as badly as I thought it was going to because I didn't really feel it was working either. It just fell apart.
"Like I said, they were super good to me while I was there, they're good people, they have a good race team, it was fun to be in the shop with the truck guys, and I'm going to miss a lot of those guys over there. But overall, it's time to think about things and move on."
Childers has not revealed what his next career move will be. However, he confirmed that his goal is to remain in the Cup Series.
"I want to be a crew chief in the Cup Series, like I've been," Childers concluded.
"I want to get past 700 races (on my resume). I want to get to that 50-win mark. I want to be with a good team and a good driver who can win races. I want that to be clear.
"I'm looking forward to figuring that out over the next six months and hopefully getting back in Victory Lane."
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