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NASCAR CUP SERIES: BIG MACHINE HAND SANITIZER 400 powered by BIG MACHINE RECORDSJuly 5, 2020Rodney ChildersIndianapolis, Indiana THE MODERATOR: We'll go right to questions for Rodney Childers, our winning crew chief. Q. Your decision to pit Kevin right before the competition caution, was that your plan from the get‑go? How did it dictate your strategy for the rest of the race? RODNEY CHILDERS: Last night I was sleeping really good, and at 3:02 I woke up and my brain said we're going to pit a lap before the competition caution comes out. I went to the restroom, then I got my computer out and worked for an hour and a half. I decided to turn my computer back off and go back to sleep for an hour. Something woke me up in the middle of the night that told me I needed to pit on lap 11 and try to get control of the race early. Q. We all heard you and Kevin, warning him late in the race that the 11 was cording their tires, push them hard. How do you feel your situation was during the race? RODNEY CHILDERS: Our tires did pretty good. We never had any issues with ours, thankfully. You never know coming to some of these places. You got a different tire a green racetrack. We knew going into it, we tried to play it pretty safe. Backed our stuff down a little bit, thinking it was going to be worse. Any time you back that stuff down, it hurts the front turn at the same time. There were times during the race they had a little bit better front turn than us. It just depends on how the situation plays out at the end of the race, which way is going to be better. It just so happened that we were out there a long time on tires at the end. Having it back down was the way to go. Q. After Denny crashes out, Gabehart is walking back to the garage, some of your guys gave him a fist pump. Denny talked about how much he enjoys competing against your guys. Where does the respect level come from? RODNEY CHILDERS: I think the biggest thing is we try to treat people the right way. We work together. I think anybody would say if we're working beside them in a garage, a close garage, we mind our own business. We try to do what's best for us. We get that same respect back. We've always had that with a lot of guys here in the garage. My respect is mainly with Gabehart. I've known Gabehart since 1995 racing go‑karts. His engine builder was my engine builder. We've had a lot of respect for each other over the years. I've been waiting for this day for him to get his shot for a long time. They kept pushing him around on the super late models, competitive series and all. I knew all along if somebody would ever give him the chance, believe in him, that he would do great things. That's really what he's done. I think Denny believes in him. His guys believe in him. They got a great group right now, just like we've got. Overall it's all about team members, all about people. We have a lot of good people and they have a lot of good people. Half of his pit crew used to be on my pit crew before, like at Evernham and different things. Some of them at Waltrip. You treat people like you want to be treated. I always tried to do that. Those guys remember that. They treat us back the same way. Q. What would you like to see IMS and Roger Penske do and continue to do with this big race weekend in years to come? RODNEY CHILDERS: Funny you brought up Roger. Earlier today I was thinking to myself, I haven't missed the drivers meetings at all any week. This week I miss the drivers meeting. I really wanted to hear RP get up there and speak. He's already made big changes here. You can go in the rest room, different places throughout the garage. The floors are painted, walls painted, everything is pristine. The little rollers you washed your hands with for 25 years, all that stuff is gone. He's already made a huge impact. He always will, no matter if it's a racetrack, a race team a car dealership, what it is, he's going to make a huge impact. I didn't get to be here yesterday, to see the INDYCAR race. I didn't get to watch the INDYCAR race. I did get to see some of the Xfinity race. That looked like it went well. I don't think anybody knew how it was going to go. It was a great race. Those guys put on a great show at the end of it. Honestly I think it's a good mixture to have some road course racing on Saturday, oval racing on Sunday, give everybody a different perspective of what we do. If you were to ask me if I wanted to road course race here, I don't. I think the Brickyard 400 means way more to me than making it into a road course. Could we have a road course race here and the Brickyard 400? Maybe one day. The thing for me is the history of the Brickyard 400, me sitting on the couch and watching certain people win this thing, I was a fan like anybody else. I cried when Jeff Gordon won the Brickyard 400. I cried when Tony Stewart won it. It is what it is. We all want to be here. That's really what it's about, is the heart and the determination to get here one day, win this race. I just don't want to see the 400 change in any way. Q. Another race where passing was big. What do you feel led to Kevin finding taking advantage of those opportunities? RODNEY CHILDERS: I think that's something that will get brought up when you talk about this race. Can you pass, can you not. You have to make those moves on the restarts when everybody is jumbled up. You have to get your track position when you can, whether on pit road or on a restart. He's done a great job with that stuff. You look back at last year, it almost took us a little while to start figuring out these restarts, how important they were, how aggressive you had to be. He's shown he can do it just like the rest of them. Today he made some bold moves that worked for us, was able to come out on top. Q. We saw tire failures with different organizations, manufacturers. Was there one common denominator why these failures were happening? RODNEY CHILDERS: I think the biggest thing is when we talked about with the racing. From the last time we were here last year, there's been nothing raced on the oval since we were here. Normally every year when we get here you have the INDYCARS here for a month straight putting rubber down almost every single day. You have those guys running 500 miles in the Indy 500. You have Xfinity cars on track, their practice, qualifying, our practice and qualifying. You didn't have any of that. It takes a certain amount of time to put rubber down. We knew it was going to be hard on tires. We kind of backed ours down a little bit to try to save from a camber standpoint, save our tires. That ended up working out for us. Not to say that was the right or wrong thing. We just tried to do our best, guess at it, hope that we did the right thing. Q. What happened with pitting a lap after Hamlin with 40 laps to go? Did you feel with all those laps to go, that might have cost you the race at that point? RODNEY CHILDERS: I mean, you know how things go. Things aren't ever going to go perfect. To win big races, you need them to go perfect. That two‑lap stint right there didn't go perfect. Getting into turn three, I called him to pit road at the same time the spotter in turn three was talking on top of me. Kevin never heard me. There was some miscommunication there for about half a lap on what we were doing. He couldn't hear me because us talking on top of each other. We came down pit road. Our pit crew has been absolutely incredible all year. The front changer, his button switched on his gun during the middle of his pattern. The rear guy, his button switched on his gun the middle of the pattern, which is odd. I feel like the guns have got a lot better. We haven't had any issues. Just so happens on the money stop of the Brickyard 400, both buttons switched. Didn't have a very good stop, just a lot of things that didn't go our way in those couple laps. Q. Were you calling him in at that point because you were in the window or because you heard the 11 was going to come in? RODNEY CHILDERS: With us being side‑by‑side, we were trying to play cat and mouse a little bit. Their team wasn't up on the wall, our team wasn't up on the wall. I really wanted to go another lap, but we could have made it from that standpoint on fuel. They were just going to try to push it a little bit harder than what we did. I wanted to leave a lap for green‑white‑checkered if we had one. That part just didn't work out that great. We tried to race each other all day. That part just didn't work out for us. Q. I believe this was win 30 for you and Kevin. What does that milestone mean to you? RODNEY CHILDERS: It's huge. We've been able to do some special things together. To win 30 races together in, what, six and a half years, seven years, I don't know what it is any more, but 30 races is huge. To have I think now 33 wins and 34 poles, it's pretty crazy. Two Brickyard 400s, back‑to‑back. He's got three of them. We love racing together. It's really about everybody else on the team, everybody back at the shop that builds great cars, our shop guys, our road crew, our pit crew. Everybody is just firing on all cylinders right now. It means a lot to win together, not just for me and Kevin. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Rodney. RODNEY CHILDERS: Thank you. Appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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