NASCAR

What Was Rodney Childers’ Relationship With Mark Martin Before He Joined Kevin Harvick?

Srijan Mandal
|Published Jan 15, 2024 03:30PM UTC

Crew chief Rodney Childers and Kevin Harvick were a solid on and off-track combination throughout their years together. But before he took on the Harvick partnership he used to be associated with another former NASCAR driver, Mark Martin.

Before Childress joined Stewart Haas Racing, he worked with several different teams in the top flight of American stock car racing. At one point while he was at Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) he was paired with David Reutimann. The pair had winning moments here and there, but after Reutimann wasn’t able to score even a single win in the 2011 season, he was replaced by Martin and Brian Vickers.

He remained with MWR till the end of the 2013 season serving as the crew chief for both Martin and Vickers, before finally parting ways and joining Harvick at SHR and the rest is history.

Rodney Childress explains how it was like working with Mark Martin and how it’s different from Kevin Harvick

While speaking about his association as Martin’s crew chief from back in the day he recalled how it used to be fun working with him. He mentioned, “The first time I got to sit down with him and talk to him. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was racer from the core. He knew a lot more about things that I thought he would. Its a lot of fun to work with him.”

Childress added that Martin would pay a lot of attention to details and always wanted everything to be perfect. The ace driver would always see if he had the fastest car that would allow him to take over the lead right after the start of the race. Thereafter speaking about Harvick, he said, “Kevin’s probably a little bit the opposite. He doesn’t really care if he runs fast at the beginning, runs fast at the end.”

“Both of them have the same mentality. Both of them want to be fast and win races, but it was just that practice sessions that was a little bit different between them,” Childress concluded.

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About the author

Srijan Mandal

Srijan Mandal is a Senior NASCAR Analyst at The Sportsrush with a wealth of experience and expertise in the world of motorsports. With several thousand articles under his belt over the years, he has established himself as a leading authority on all things racing. His passion for motorsports started at a young age, and he has dedicated his career to covering the sport in all its forms. He is an expert in various disciplines, including stock car racing, American motorsports, Formula 1, IndyCar, NHRA, MotoGP, WRC, WEC, and several more. But Srijan's love for racing goes beyond his writing. He actively competes in professional open-wheel simulation racing, using the number 88 as his racing number. While he mostly participates in GT Endurance classes, he also ventures into Stock Car racing from time to time. In case, you wish to contact Srijan, kindly send an email to him at srijan.mandal@sportsrush.com or just DM him on Twitter.