1on1: Richard Childress

Richard Childress has done just about everything in his 35 years as a NASCAR driver and team owner. He's won championships, surfed the highs and scraped the lows during that time.

As he heads into the stretch run of the 2008 season, he has all three of his teams in the top 12 in points, but the margins these days are paper-thin. He's got a lot on his plate with the race teams, let alone his vineyard, a pair of grandsons who are tearing up their respective divisions and the pressures of being one of the top car owners in business.

So how does this dynamo of a man take a step back? How does he find time to endow a pediatric trauma wing at a Winston-Salem, N.C., hospital and do the thousand-and-one other things that require his attention? NASCAR.COM caught up with him to find out.

Q: Did you ever imagine that you and [crew chief] Kirk Shelmerdine, pulling the cars on a 45-degree flatbed, would be in this position to do all you and your family are doing?

Childress: Not really. You never dream of that, but you never forget where you come from and you get the opportunity to give something back and do something for other people that's going to make a difference. It makes it real special.

Q: A couple weeks ago, we had some down time. Did you ever anticipate or dream of having a place in Montana? Did you just kick back there, do anything special? How much of a battery charger was it especially since you have 17 tough weeks ahead?

Childress: It's really just a place to go and get totally away from everything. When I get up at 6 in the morning out there, the first two or three days that I'm there, I call the office, it's 8 at home and I'll stay on until about 10, then I'll take the rest of the day. Usually when I go out there I'm working, and this last time I was there it was a lot of work. It's great to have a place where you can get on a horse and ride back up in the hills, go hiking or do whatever you want to do. It's really a cool deal. It's a good place to get your thoughts together to what you want to try and accomplish.

Q: What's the next big safari or trip you have planned?

Childress: I want to go back to Africa ... this isn't real big, but the next thing is, I'm going to Newfoundland this fall and hunt the woodlands caribou. I'll probably go to Africa next year. I've got Africa in the plans, and in 2010 to go back to Mongolia.

Q: The kids, Austin and Ty, are so into racing now, can they go? Who are you thinking of taking?

Childress: Probably one of my hunting buddies. I'd love to take the kids, if their racing schedules allow it. They're so wound up into racing now, racing comes first. I was afraid it was going to be girls, but now it's racing and girls [chuckling].

Childress Vineyards

Opened in October 2004, Childress Vineyards is located in Lexington, N.C., and offers a collection five house, 11 varietals and three signature wines.

• Official Web site, click here

Q: How's the vineyard doing?

Childress: It's doing well. We're doing a lot more special events now. We're coming with a muscadine wine, which we didn't have planned, but there's so much call for it we're going to bring it out. It's doing good; it's a lot of fun. My daughter runs it and the best part about it is I get to spend a lot of time with her.

Q: You talk about not having it planned to do that variety, where is the vineyard in relation to where you thought it might be or could be when you started it?

Childress: It's a lot bigger than we ever dreamed it would be. It's been more accepted than we thought it would be, but I think the biggest thing is, I wanted to make all the wines like I want, really good top-end wines. We have so many first-time drinkers or people who like sweet wines back east in North Carolina, we've had to go more and more in that direction. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you can make the other wines too.

Q: Do you have a fix on the people who are coming to your vineyards because of the wine and not because of Richard Childress and stock car racing?

Childress: We do. We have a survey when it's not racing season, for just travelers. About 65 percent of them are people who don't follow the racing much and just love wine and vineyards. It's the opposite when it's race time and it gets packed, but when it's not, it's 60-65 percent of people who are just wanting to see the vineyards. We're getting ready to launch the muscadine wine this week. It's well-priced, and it's called scupperdine wine.

Q: Obviously, the next step for your grandson, Austin Dillon, was to give him a shot at the Camping World Series. You talk about the vineyard and all that, but in terms of the season he's having, what can you say about his performance so far?

Childress: He's having a phenomenal year for a rookie in that series because he's racing against drivers who have been racing there for years and years. To be able to compete with really top-end drivers who have been racing that series, to go out and run good and win races and lead the points as long as he led it, I'm really proud of his accomplishments. But just as well, his brother Ty, has won six or seven dirt races this year and won that big All-Star Challenge across the street at Charlotte, where all the best of the best were running. It's the same path that Austin took, and we'll probably put him in the East races next year. We may even put him in one before the year's over. He just hasn't run much asphalt, just like Austin hadn't. We had him on dirt, and he really adjusted well. We're going to put Ty in some Late Model races before the year's out.

Q: Are they typical teenagers? Do they compete?

Childress: They compete against each other harder than they do against anybody else.

Q: Is there something funny that we can tell that kind of shows how competitive they are with each other?

Childress: The biggest thing is they're always kidding each other. They'll put a note on the other one's dash before the race, saying, 'get out of the way' or 'I'm going to win this one.' They're always just picking with each other, different things.

Q: How is the progress coming on the fourth team? Have you had any talks on a crew chief?

Childress: We've got a lot of things going on, already building cars, got a lot of stuff in place, but we're not ready to announce anything right now or say anything.

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.