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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: AAA 400

October 4, 2015

Rodney Childers

DOVER, DELAWARE

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by crew chief Rodney Childers, the crew chief for the No.4 Budweiser Jimmy John's Chevrolet, the winning car in today's 46th annual AAA 400, and Rodney, a lot of pressure on your team, and once again, the 4 team responds. What was going through your mind in the final laps of this race?
RODNEY CHILDERS: I don't even remember what was going through my mind. It seems like when you get in a situation like that where you're leading there at the end, there's just so many things that‑‑ every lap I would turn around to 3 and 4 where I could see us out of the corner and make sure the car was there again. There's just so many things that can go wrong. It seems like we've had a lot of them this year.
It was just nice to have a fast car and to have things go smoothly today and just‑‑ honestly, we've made mistakes, and that's something that you can't do as a race team to win a championship, and it was nice not to have those today.

Q. The last two races, coming in you talked about a lot of pressure, but the one constant was that you obviously had fast cars and speed. Did that kind of allay your concern a little bit coming into this race, or is it still a lot of really big pressure?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, you know, we felt like we had done a good job of preparing ourselves for the Chase. We got to Chicago, and we had a fast car, and qualifying got rained out, which put us on the pole, and felt like we had the best car in practice, and then we started the race, and really wasn't as good as what we thought we were. It seemed like the racetrack started coming back around, and we started getting better, and then that's when everything kind of broke loose.
But going to Loudon, we felt like we had been really strong there the two races previous. We felt like we were taking really one of our best cars there, and really Loudon I thought we could go up there and we could win, and I thought that we would be fast all weekend, and it turned out that way until three laps to go.
This week was a different story. I wasn't 100 percent positive on everything. I didn't have the warm, fuzzy feeling. This was a car that hadn't been very good before. We had wrecked it at Bristol at the beginning of the year last year, and when we put a front clip on it, it didn't turn out right, and it always took different slugs than every other car, and just nothing seemed to be right with it. We ran it at Kentucky earlier this year, and it didn't run good again, and finally I was done with it. We cut the clips off, cut the body off, and said we're going to get it ready for the Chase, and that's what everybody did, and they worked really hard on it, and it turned out good in the wind tunnel and even when they turn out good in the wind tunnel if they've never run good before, you kind of wonder if you want to take them somewhere. But it did a good job for us all weekend. It had good speed and came through for us.

Q. Rodney, the cars the last two weeks were pretty phenomenal, but at the same time maybe some teams haven't had to use their best stuff, the JGR guys. If they're in prime position they don't have to bring out their best cars. Have you guys had to use your best stuff? Do you still feel like you have bullets left in the tank, and are you at a disadvantage now with maybe not the best resources that you would have had?
RODNEY CHILDERS: I think you hit it on the head. I think we're a little bit of a disadvantage. I'm not really sure what those guys have. You know, that's their deal. But yeah, we've had to pull out stuff, cars that we really didn't want to. You know, Clair asked me over in victory lane if we were ready for Charlotte, and I was like, well, we really don't know what car we're running yet.
So we've got a good race team. We've been through situations like this before. We've got good cars sitting at the shop. The car we raced at Loudon last week is already back on the floor ready to go. If we wanted to race it, we could. We've got a car going to the wind tunnel tomorrow morning that should be good, and then we've got our Charlotte car that we're planning on racing sitting there. We've got a good race team, and we've got good cars sitting there, but definitely have had to show more the past two weeks than what we really wanted to.

Q. Rodney, I think it was before the next to last caution, Kevin was talking about maybe a vibration in the car. You guys come in and you only take two tires. I'm trying to figure out, well, if it's a loose tire, what if it's not one of the ones you change? How do you guys figure that and make that call?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, I mean, we got video on all the guys' helmets. You can tell if it's something like that. You know, we had an instance earlier in the race where a lug nut got knocked off and run a whole fuel run with three on there. But our guys do a good job. They make sure they stay on the nuts long enough and make sure we don't have loose wheels and stuff like that. As soon as he said that, I just didn't feel like that was a problem, and the guys that are over that stuff started going over all the video and all that, and they said it all looked good.
At that point I just blew it off and kept on racing.

Q. Last year when you guys won when you had to, it was at the end of the season, there was so much at stake, I'm sure that helped carry the team forward. They talk about this being more of a people sport. You've still got seven races left after these last three races, what you guys have gone through. What kind of an emotional task has this taken on you and on this team, and how do you rebound to do this seven more times?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, in all honesty, winning fixes everything. You know, if we would have lost today, it would have been a downhill spiral, I believe, and probably struggled the next few weeks. It is all about people. It's all about attitude. It's all about confidence. Our group is good at that. They never waver. They do a great job each and every day. They come into the shop with a smile on their face, and they just make it happen.
And I said this a lot last year: I got lucky. I've never been a guy that was good at looking over résumés and interviewing people and figuring out who the best guy was. I go off of my gut instinct, and I don't know how I did it, but I got lucky. These guys have shown it over and over again that they can make stuff happen, and they do a great job at it.

Q. I just want to go back to the last pit stop. I know with the‑‑ Kenny was saying about the possible vibration. When you took two and then Kyle took four, then the next restart Kyle wound up behind Kevin, were you getting nervous that Kyle had fresher tires or were you confident he was going to hold him off like he did?
RODNEY CHILDERS: No, not at all. They changed the tire this year, and there's not really any falloff anymore, and I think here in the spring we stayed out with 60 laps on our tires and nobody could pass us. We felt like we had a strong enough car. We watched the 18 and the 78 put two tires on earlier. Nobody could really pass them. They ran the exact same lap times they did on four tires the run before.
And then that particular run, the 20 had stayed out‑‑ he had a bad restart, but once he fell into line, he was faster than what he was earlier in the race on four tires. We felt confident that putting two tires on it was going to be just fine.

Q. Jimmie Johnson said it was a faulty axle seal that caused them to finish 41st. I know you're no stranger to mechanical failures here with valve stems and whatnot. As a crew chief what do you think when you hear faulty axle seal?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Honestly, it's one of the things that is the scariest of everything that race teams deal with. From the media standpoint you don't really see that. You think that the race teams worry about engine trouble or things like that. But these axle seal problems, they happen all the time, and a lot of times you don't hear about them. At Martinsville earlier this year we got done with the race and the whole inside the right rear wheel, the brakes, everything was covered with gear lube and there was hardly any gear lube left in the gear. It's something that all the teams have fought for a long time. We fought it earlier this year. We still change stuff on it. It seems like every week we're looking at those things trying to figure out how to make them better.
Over the winter we actually went to what Hendrick is running, so now that you said that, it scares me to death. But those things are pretty dangerous.
The 14 had it happen not long ago, too. It's pretty scary.

Q. I know you're a calm guy, but were you nervous? Did you have butterflies today, or were you kind of just letting it happen?
RODNEY CHILDERS: I don't think I really ever felt nervous today. I felt that way last night. The last couple nights I've just thought about a lot of things, and you know, there's so much in my life that changes from day‑to‑day, I'm lucky that I have a family that I do that understand all this stuff. But it's dealing with the person that's on the worst depression thing that they could be on to the guy that's winning the race and happy as he can be when he gets home, and you just deal with that stuff all the time. It seems like the way things are now with the Chase, it's even harder on all the teams.
But when I woke up this morning, I felt confident. The thing that scared me the most is I looked through every piece of history I could find last night, and not one time since I've ever been Cup racing was the track tent this cold here at Dover while we were racing. I was like, I don't think it's ever going to rubber up. I don't think it's going to do this, I don't think it's going to do that. I don't know if the balance is ever going to change like it normally does. Really my engineer and myself, we talked back and forth last night, and kept watching old races and looking through notes and finally I sent him an email and I said, look, man, I don't know what to do. I don't know anything to change other than just leave it alone and we'll deal with it.
We got ready this morning and set it up on the scales, and wrote all of our numbers down and took it back on the scales and rolled with it, and we just got lucky that it was as good as it was.

Q. Kevin led 355 laps; we've talked before about if somebody goes out there and really dominates that NASCAR might not be real happy with that. How do you think they're going to react to your win today?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, I don't know. I mean, if we would have had qualifying on Friday, we'd have led 400 (laughter), so you know, it's just part of it. We came here to win. We're that type of team that we don't‑‑ you know, when you're backed in a corner like this, what are you supposed to do? We're not going to ride around fifth all day and wait to take the lead at the end. That's not what we're made out of. We came here to lead laps and to do our job and to end up with that car in victory lane. You know, it's part of it. You know, we've been over there 30 times, I think, now, so looking forward to going back and taking them breakfast again on Tuesday morning.

Q. You went back and looked at the records, how cold it was in the past; how far back did the records go, because I remember the first Delaware 500 here it was this cold.
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, that was long before me. I just looked through my records, which would have been‑‑

Q. I think it was about 45 that day, and that day there were only three lap leaders.
RODNEY CHILDERS: Really?

Q. Yeah, same as today.
RODNEY CHILDERS: Gotcha. Yeah, I guess back 2003 was my first go‑around here, and it's never had a track tent this cold since then.

Q. Unfortunately a dinosaur like me goes back to '71.
RODNEY CHILDERS: (Laughs.)

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