"It just started kind of falling apart at Spire" – Childers

There was no one thing that led to Rodney Childers and Spire Motorsports unexpectedly deciding to mutually part ways last week.

Childers gave his first interview on the subject Monday as a guest on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. He mostly echoed the sentiment already expressed by Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson about how things were not working between the two sides, admitting it got to a point where everyone could see they weren’t happy. Childers called the shots on Justin Haley’s No. 7 team for the first nine races of the season after being hired from the now-shuttered Stewart-Haas Racing.

“Going into it, I was super excited about going there,” said Childers (pictured above in 2018). “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. 

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“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 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.”

The duo earned one top-10 finish in nine races and was 23rd in the standings going into the only off weekend (Easter). It was during the break that Spire Motorsports decided to make the change, putting Ryan Sparks back on the pit box. Sparks will also continue to serve as the organization’s competition director. 

Haley addressed the change over the weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, describing it as unexpected. He was not informed it was happening beforehand.

“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,” Childers continued. “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.”

Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway was the first time Childers watched a race from home with no vested interest since becoming a Cup Series crew chief in 2005. Childers' next steps remain to be seen, and he admits the phone has not rung as much as he had hoped over the last week, which he suspects is due to other teams being blindsided by his sudden unemployment. He is trying to keep busy at home in the meantime, and is not giving up on his future in NASCAR.

“I want to be a crew chief in the Cup Series, like I’ve been,” Childers said. “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.”