Rodney Childers’ time at Spire Motorsports lasted just nine points races.
The team announced it had split with the championship-winning crew chief ahead of this weekend’s Cup Series race at Talladega. Childers arrived at Spire after the closure of Stewart-Haas Racing at the end of the 2024 season.
“NASCAR is an ever-evolving sport and the path to improvement isn’t always comfortable,” Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson said in a statement. “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. 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.”
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Childers teamed up with Justin Haley on Spire’s No. 7 car in 2025 but they’ve struggled so far this season. Haley is 23rd in the standings with an average finish of 20.2 and just one top-10 finish. That came at Homestead when he finished 10th after starting 21st.
Haley ranks second of the three Spire drivers in the standings. Michael McDowell is 19th and Carson Hocevar is 25th. Hocevar, who finished second at Atlanta, has the best finish of any Spire driver this season.
Childers’ departure comes weeks after car chief Robert “Cheddar” Smith left the team for the same position with Ty Gibbs at Joe Gibbs Racing. Smith had worked with Childers since their time at Stewart-Haas.
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Childers was one of the most coveted crew chiefs ahead of the 2025 season because of his success at SHR. His drivers have won 40 races over 21 seasons, though all but three of those wins are by Kevin Harvick. The two joined forces at SHR in 2014 and immediately won five races and the championship that season. Harvick won 21 races from 2018-20 and finished no lower than fifth in the points standings from 2017-21.
However, Harvick won just two races over his final three seasons in the Cup Series. Josh Berry replaced him at SHR in 2024 and had two top fives and four top 10s with Childers as his crew chief a season ago as SHR announced midseason that it would cease operations at the end of the year. Team co-owner Gene Haas kept one of the team’s four charters and fields Cole Custer for the Haas Factory Team as the other three charters were sold to various teams.
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