Last year, news broke that Stewart-Haas Racing would undergo massive changes. There was a rebrand to Haas Factory Team, and they lost all but one charter. Then, a large chunk of the workforce was offloaded and all had to find different teams to work for. Among the many casualties was crew chief Rodney Childers, but he was not in limbo for long. Instead, Spire Motorsports was quick to snap him up for the upcoming campaign.

Much like Aston Martin F1 recruiting Adrian Newey, Spire Motorsports have got their own marquee signing. Recently, he spoke about the work culture fostered within the organization. Childers believed that Spire Motorsports has gotten a good crop of employees this year and it will pay dividends. According to him, all the employees are supremely talented, and with all that talent, the only trajectory is up.

For the upcoming season, Spire Motorsports is fielding three full-time cars. After replacing Corey LaJoie late last season, Justin Haley retains the #7 seat. Alongside him will be Michael McDowell in the #71 car, replacing Zane Smith, who heads to Front Row Motorsports. Meanwhile, Carson Hocevar retains his #77 seat for the upcoming campaign.

Rodney Childers has high hopes for Spire Motorsports

Since its inception in 2019, the organization has not been particularly successful. They can only boast of one Cup win at the hands of Haley in their debut season. Aside from that, the team has picked up five wins in the Truck Series. LaJoie endured a torrid stint during his time with the team, and they eventually let him go last year. Now, Childers is hoping that the host of changes will yield good fortune.

Childers told Kenny Wallace, “For sure, when you stand a weekday morning out here in the shop. Get ready to have our team meeting and look around to the amount of talent that is in this building. It’s absolutely insane. There’s a lot of places that you have A people, B people, C people, D people or whatever. You look around right now, it’s all A+ people standing around in a circle. Normally when you get that many good people together, you can make good things happen.”

So the big question is, will all these personnel changes, will they be the key to bringing the team to the front? Rodney Childers certainly thinks so and he has a lot of faith in the new recruits. According to him, Spire Motorsports is packed to the rafters with talented employees and they can all help uplift the team.

There are a few familiar faces at Spire Motorsports

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As it turns out, Childers is not the only ex-SHR representative in the organization. Following the team selling most of its charters, there was a mass exodus from Stewart-Haas Racing. Naturally, many waylaid employees were snapped up by different teams across the board. So it was inevitable that a few of them would follow Childers to Spire Motorsports. Speaking to Wallace, Childers mentioned that a few ex-SHR personnel joined him.

He continued, “I think there ended up being 18-20 people in total that came from Stewart-Haas. Some of them came from the #4 car to the #7, but there’s a lot of designers, QC guys, fabricators, shop guys, all kinds of different people. That’s not something that was in my plan, to begin with. Somebody asked me that yesterday if that was how I sat down with Spire, to begin with. ‘I’ll come if I can take 20 people with me,’ It was never that way. I decided to come, and then we kind of worked on it from there. They were trying to build and bring new people in. Like I said, A+ talent is hard to get right now. We just worked on it, over time and we got a great group of people here. It’s exciting to look around and see what you have.”

With all that being said, Kevin Harvick’s former 2014 title-winning crew chief is excited to see what 2025 holds for the team. Spire Motorsports may have had a rough start to its career, but Childers is confident that things will look up from there.