For Kevin Harvick and Rodney Childers, Wednesday’s CARS Tour race at North Wilkesboro Speedway during NASCAR All-Star Week is the culmination of a project that started more than a year ago.
That’s when the pair, best known for their work together on the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang in the NASCAR Cup Series, decided to begin the process of building a Late Model Stock Car.
That car, carrying the No. 62, will make its racing debut during Wednesday’s Window World 125 at North Wilkesboro (4:30 p.m. ET on FloRacing) with Harvick holding the steering wheel.
RELATED: How to watch this week’s late model races at North Wilkesboro
“Going and working on that thing is like going and playing a round of golf for some people,” Childers said. “I love to go over there and enjoy it. [The other day] I was over there four hours after work. I was by myself, music was going, and it was peaceful, and I was having fun with it.
“There are some people who love to go fishing. There are some people who love to go hunting. To me, the late model is kind of that thing. I can still use my brain for a lot of cool things and come up with things that maybe the late model guys don’t know or can’t do. It’s kind of fun to pull that stuff out from the back of your brain and see if it’ll work.”
According to Childers, building a new Late Model Stock Car team from the ground up has been no simple task.
From the chassis to the toolbox to the jacks, everything had to be ordered, and, in most cases, there was a lengthy wait before anything could be delivered. For example, Childers said they waited four months for the chassis, four months for an engine, five months for a toolbox, four months for jacks and 12 months for a trailer.
“We started out needing everything,” said Childers, who began his own career racing Late Model Stock Cars in the Southeast. “Needing a car, needing an engine, a transmission, wheels, a trailer, jack stands, jacks, a toolbox, tools. We didn’t have anything at all. It’s taken quite some time to actually feel like we were ready to go racing.
“It takes a long time to accumulate enough stuff like that. People who have raced a long time have all that, and they can build a new car and go race it in just a couple months. For us, we didn’t even have jack stands to put it on or a way of hauling it to the race track.”
Childers said he even went so far as to use the same check list he used when he was forming the No. 4 NASCAR Cup Series team ahead of the 2014 season to make sure he didn’t forget anything important.
“That was the list I actually used,” Childers said. “It has everything on there from jack stands to drain pans to grease guns to rivet guns to what tools to buy. It’s three pages of stuff that we started the No. 4 Cup car with. It’s been a gradual process of accumulating all that stuff.”
Some of @NASCAR‘s biggest stars are headed back to their roots. 🤩
Who are you excited to see in a Late Model?
LEARN MORE 👉📰 https://t.co/cy3nHXl4FE#ECMD150 x #WindowWorld125 pic.twitter.com/m2sLAEuzqE
– North Wilkesboro Speedway (@NWBSpeedway) May 13, 2023
Once Childers acquired everything he needed, he started blocking off time each week to build the car. Initially he spent a few hours every Thursday working on the car, but as the race at North Wilkesboro has drawn closer, he’s found himself working nights to make sure the car would be ready to race.
“As far as the car, it was really just working on it for three or four hours on Thursdays. That was really my only day off,” Childers said. “I would go over there and piddle with it. Honestly Kevin was pretty patient with me just doing it that way and not getting somebody else to come in there and take over.
“I think he knew the car meant a lot to me, and he was just kind of letting me do it.”
Late Model Stock Car racing has always been a passion for Childers. He made a name for himself racing them long before he become a crew chief at the top level of NASCAR; that included a victory in the inaugural Fall Brawl at Hickory Motor Speedway in 1998.
That passion has kept Childers involved on a small level in Late Model Stock Car racing for years, either as an interested observer or by helping drivers like Bobby McCarty, a three-time champion of the CARS Late Model Stock Tour.
“Through the years I’ve continued to help different people at different times,” Childers said. “Two years ago I was helping Bobby McCarty, and he was able to win I think four or five races that year. One of them that really stuck out was the fall race at South Boston, where he just dominated. We had actually built the shocks here at SHR.”
We caught up with the President & CEO of SMI, @MarcusSMI, to talk about the challenges of resurrecting @NWBSpeedway and what this upcoming week means to the people of Wilkes County. pic.twitter.com/DKXOuACfCa
– FloRacing (@FloRacing) May 14, 2023
The competition in the CARS Tour is among the closest in short-track racing today, something of which Childers is keenly aware. He knows going up against series regulars like Carson Kvapil, Deac McCaskill, Brenden Queen, Connor Hall and Chad McCumbee will be a challenge.
“I had somebody tell me Monday morning that it’s harder to finish top five in a CARS Tour race than it was an Xfinity race,” Childers said. “I kind of laughed at first, and then I was like, ‘You know, you’re probably right.'”
That begs the question: What does Childers expect when Harvick takes the green flag Wednesday evening at North Wilkesboro Speedway?
“If you finish top 10, you’ve probably done something good,” Childers said. “It’s going to be a tough field. After you’ve worked on it for a year and a half, you want to go out there, sit on the front row, pace yourself and sit there and ride and see what you’ve got at the end. That’s what you really want to do.
“I think for us, anything could be possible.”