Rodney Childers on tire probe talk: 'I love it'

But when the sanctioning body announces for two straight weeks that it will take the tires from the SHR No. 4 as part of a routine audit, eyebrows raise and questions start circulating — especially when the speculation swirls about teams altering their standard Goodyears. Rodney Childers, the car’s crew chief, has grown frustrated by the extra attention, but he’s still laughing some of it off, taking it as a compliment.

“Honestly, I’m flattered,” Childers said with a grin at the back of his team’s hauler. “I love it.”

Harvick leads the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings by 28 points, a significant gap heading into only the sixth race of the season, on Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. Harvick’s run of finishing first or second stands intact at eight races, stretching back to last season, and he’s the only multiple winner thus far in 2015.

With all the success and accolades, it’s natural that the class of the field would get the lion’s share of scrutiny. But Childers calls it simply the cost of doing business.

“I don’t think everybody realizes that they’ve taken our tires 17 times in the last 18 months,” Childers said. “Every time we finish first or second, our car goes back to the R&D Center with the tires we won the race on. NASCAR’s doing their jobs and everybody else is making a big deal about it, right? If I’m one of the other competitors, yes, I would want them to take the 4 car’s tires. Of course I would.

“They’re doing their jobs, just like they’ve done year after year after year. …I’m starting to get a little bit ill about it. It’s turned into a joke.”

NASCAR has taken the tires from select teams the last two weeks for further review at an independent lab. Rumblings persist in the garage that teams have been placing small holes in their tires, with the goal of leveling air pressure when tires heat up during green-flag racing, but NASCAR officials reported that the tires from the first audit showed nothing illegal. Results of the second review haven’t been released.

The only common thread in both examinations was that Harvick’s No. 4 was chosen as part of the audit both weeks. But Childers’ reasoning goes, wouldn’t a car that’s consistently near the front of the pack be inspected with the finest-toothed comb?

“That’s their job. Why would they not?” Childers said. “If you’ve got a car that’s on a streak like the 4 car’s been and they’ve got eight top-twos in a row, nobody’s done that since 1967 when there was 2.5 cars on the lead lap at the end of each race, it’s a big damn deal, you know. I don’t blame them at all. I’m 100 percent on their side. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to keep a level playing field.

“If I was on another team, I would feel like I had pretty good cars and I had a good driver and we were doing the best job we could. You would hope that your cars are pretty close to somebody else’s and your driver’s pretty close to someone else, and when you can’t run with them, you get aggravated and start looking at what could be different. They also need to look at qualifying because bleeding your tires for qualifying for one lap, it don’t help — we beat ’em every week. They better get working on their cars, I tell ya.”

Childers said trips to the NASCAR Research & Development Center have been business as usual, but some of the newfound consideration may stem from a new level of transparency from NASCAR officials. The recent philosophy shift, owed in large part to the sanctioning body’s marketing and communications arm, has pulled back the curtain on many technical procedures that used to be conducted behind the scenes.

“I think so. And as a competitor, we don’t mind that,” Childers said. “The only thing I don’t like is when it stirs up a bunch of drama because there’s no need for it. But it’s part of it. You don’t want the drama surrounding your team. You want to keep them focused on what you’re doing. All in all, they’re doing their jobs.”

For Childers, the accusations are nothing new. He says he’s been hearing them since he started racing at age 12. The allegations have followed him throughout, even through his days as a Late Model hotshot at Tri-County Motor Speedway in the North Carolina foothills where he assembled a hot streak that rivals Harvick’s current run — winning what he estimated as 11 straight races in the 1998 season.

“The tech official had searched my car to death,” Childers said. “It’s like the last race of the year, and I’d beat this guy, and he kept paying to get (my engine) tore down over and over and over. The head tech official comes over, gives me the head back for my engine and goes ‘you’re good.’ “

Childers said the official then asked an odd question — if he could borrow his right shoe. He handed it over.

“I didn’t know what he was doing,” Childers said, “and he walks it right over to that guy that had paid to tear me down all year and handed it to him and said, ‘I guess this is what you need.’ “

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