Rodney Childers deciding to stay atop the No. 4 pit box for Stewart-Haas Racing came down to who was going to succeed Kevin Harvick in 2024.
“If it wasn’t the right person, I don’t know if I would have done it anymore,” Childers said Wednesday as Josh Berry was introduced to the team. “And I’ve said that a lot over the last 10 years; it would be hard to replace what I’ve had with Kevin . The relationship we’ve had is just crazy special.”
Childers and Harvick joined Stewart-Haas in 2014, and it was Harvick who made the call about whom he wanted as his crew chief. Childers then built the No. 4 team from scratch, guiding it to a championship in its first year.
To date, Childers and Harvick have won 37 points races in the NASCAR Cup Series. But after 23 years at the Cup Series level, Harvick is retiring at season’s end.
“We laugh about it, but the amount of conversations that we have and text messages and all that, everyone thinks we kid about it, but it’s way more than you can imagine,” said Childers. “So, for me, it needed to be someone who I felt like we could win races. Somebody that I can have fun with it and go to dinner and talk about late models and talk about racing, and have intelligent conversations about life and geometry on race cars. Somebody that understands that kind of stuff.
“All of that was super-important to me. I think everybody knows I’m a racer, and I’ll do it as long as I can do it, but as you can see, my kids are as tall as me now, and I’ve had them on the backburner their whole life. There are certainly weeks that I wonder what’s right. Is it spending more time with them, or is it providing a good life for them? Right now, I want to win races with Josh Berry, and obviously, I want to win races with Kevin Harvick the rest of the year.
“But it was definitely having someone like him and someone I believe in through thick and thin is really important.”
Childers is a Berry fan because of their common background in short-track racing. Childers has watched Berry dominate on short tracks all across the country over the years.
When it came time to start making a list of Harvick’s replacement, it wasn’t a long one for Stewart-Haas Racing. Berry was the top choice, and the organization put all their eggs in the basket of trying to sign him.
Having the support of Childers in the process was the way “it has to be,” said co-owner Tony Stewart. Childers has been a Cup Series crew chief since 2005, becoming one of the most decorated in the series.
“The crew chief has buy into who he’s putting in that car, especially when you’ve got someone like Rodney, who’s had a championship-caliber driver from day one with Harvick,” said Stewart. “You go to replace that driver, if Rodney’s not 100% all in on that driver, it’s not going to matter. It could take years to develop that relationship like Rodney had mentioned. No one person m akes a decision at Stewart-Haas Racing, we do it as a group, and Rodney was a very big part of that. He has built an iconic program at Stewart-Haas Racing with that 4 car, and to continue that, his input probably weighed more than any of us.”