1on1: Richard Childress (cont'd)

Q: The only reason I'm going to name this name is because it appears Ryan Newman is going in a different direction. How seriously were you pursuing him?

Childress: He's going someplace else. We just talked a little. At the time he had a contract with Roger and I just wasn't going to pursue any deeper, because I try not to bother other people's drivers unless I know they don't have a contract or they have an opportunity to give us.

Q: In general, with your history in the sport, is there anything you can think of that can help the tire situation with these new cars?

Childress: I'm sure NASCAR is looking at other options, but the biggest thing is, I think you have to get it where these guys have more downforce on the rear, and at some point, you have to take a look at something besides the wing. My personal opinion, I'd like to see them put a spoiler back on the car, and that way you can make better downforce than you can with this wing. That's just my opinion.

Q: Again, with your experience as a driver and team owner, when you look at what Tony Stewart is faced with, from your seat, what does he have to look forward to for the rest of '08 trying to organize his own program and stay in the Chase, and in '09, what does he have to look forward to and what is the biggest challenge going to be for him?

Childress: The whole thing is people. Tony will be successful if he gets the right people in there and he sticks to the driving part of it and has the right people in there doing it for him. I've already told Tony that I'd help him any way I could, answer any questions, help him out with anything I could, and he appreciated that. I want to see Tony succeed. To get another owner back in there ...I don't think there's any other driver-owners in there except for me and Petty. I think to have an owner like Tony in it would be good for the sport.

Q: From a manufacturer's perspective, as a Chevrolet owner, how important is it to have Tony Stewart back in a Chevrolet as a teammate?

Childress: I think it's great to have him, because I think he's going to have Ryan [Newman], and that's just two more great teams we've got to help us win that manufacturer's championship.

Q: You recently announced a program to build a pediatric trauma center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and you and your wife Judy committed $5 million to get it started. What was the idea behind that?

Childress: We've been working on this for close to two years. I went to speak to a group of neurosurgeons out in Scottsdale, Ariz., basically on teamwork ... you know, the brain and the spine, getting the two types of neurosurgeons to work together. I went and spoke to them and when they were going to pay me for that, I said, 'just take the money and put it in the local children's hospital.' I told Dr. Charlie Branch, how about finding something that Judy and I can put our feet into and put some time and really get behind it that can help save kids' lives?

A few months went by, two or three, and they came back with the idea of pediatric trauma and once they started explaining it to us, my first question was, 'How could this be? This is the 21st century, and this shouldn't be. This should have been addressed 50 years ago or longer.' We know that research works. It saves lives. Once they started explaining to us about the need for it and the need for awareness of it, we got on board and made a financial commitment. We also made a commitment to get the word out and do fund-raisers to do what it takes to get us to the next level. I'll probably be going to Congress this year to testify to the National Institutes of Health. For every man, woman and child in America, they spent $18 or something like that, and we know that works. People are living with cancer longer, we know that works. All the research they're doing is money well spent. We know that for every man, woman and child in America last year, they spent $10 on AIDS, and we know that works. People are living longer with AIDS.

But for every man, woman and child in America, they spend nine cents on childhood trauma, and that's the No. 1 killer of our children. More than 12,000 children died last year from trauma. More than 100,000 were left injured, needing rehabilitation, and there's no single rehabilitation center in America to help take care of these children, much less for the needs of the families. The worst thing any of us can do is to lose a child, and that is the kind of thing that when something like that happens, we need help for those families. That's something we want to get behind and help. We want to be able to train medics over here, we want pediatric specialists to be trained over here, we want the research to be done so that when a child has a head trauma, what does his blood pressure need to be, how to you need to bring his blood pressure back to level. They just take the adult information and downsize it. Nobody knows. Is that right or is that wrong?

There's a thousand other examples. Some of your first-response vehicles may not have a small enough mask to fit a child; they may not have a small enough cuff to get true blood pressures and things. These are the things that we want to go out and let people know how to save the lives of children, and it starts from first response.