Rodney Childers hopes to return to NASCAR Cup Series after Spire Motorsports exit

Rodney Childers is officially a free agent after he and Spire Motorsports parted ways last Wednesday. Childers’ tenure with Spire, serving as crew chief for the No. 7 team and Justin Haley, lasted nine races.

He said in a statement later that day he would be taking “a little time” to focus on his personal life. But the 48-year-old isn’t planning for retirement. During a Monday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Childers said he still wants to continue his career as a crew chief, hopefully finding his way back to Victory Lane in the future.

“I think in my statement, it was not really clear what I wanted, and I want to be clear in that I want to be a crew chief in the Cup Series like I’ve been,” Childers said. “I want to get past that 700 races [milestone]. I want to get to that 50-win mark. I want to be with a good team, a good driver that can win races. And I want that to be clear. I’m looking forward to figuring that out over the next six months and hopefully get back in Victory Lane.”

Rodney Childers on Spire Motorsports split: ‘It just kind of started falling apart’

Whenever Childers decides it’s time to return to NASCAR, he should have plenty of suitors. His resume speaks for itself. Childers is a crew chief with 40 career victories. He won the 2014 Cup Series Championship with Kevin Harvick. Childers wants to be a Hall of Famer and feels there’s more work to be done.

“I had a couple [of] opportunities last year to go after the competition director thing, and I was kind of just really stuck on — I feel like, to one day be in the Hall of Fame, I need more wins than 40,” Childers said. “And, you know, all that kind of stuff means a lot to me. And I want to keep chasing those numbers, and I want to have more poles, and I wanna have more wins and all that.”

Unfortunately for Childers and Spire, the marriage was not for the long haul. Just a few races into their nine-race stint, Childers knew something was off. The chemistry did not improve as the season wore on. Eventually, it reached a point where both sides knew it was time for a breakup, Childers said.

“It finally [came to] a point where they could kind of tell I wasn’t happy, and I could kind of tell that maybe they weren’t happy. And it just started falling apart a little bit,” Childers said. “And I could sense it a little bit. Maybe a couple of weeks before [parting ways], it had kind of [gotten] quiet around. And anytime it gets quiet, you kind of start wondering, you know?”