Rodney Childers & Kevin Harvick Publicly Spill Tony Stewart’s Fall-Off in NASCAR Next-Gen

Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) emerged as a formidable force in NASCAR, blending the talents of three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart with the engineering prowess of Gene Haas. Established in 2009, SHR swiftly made its mark by securing the 2011 NASCAR Cup Series championship with Stewart at the helm. The team’s prowess continued with Kevin Harvick clinching the 2014 title, and SHR amassing a total of 70 Cup Series victories, including prestigious wins at the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400. Despite this, SHR faced mounting challenges that led to its closure soon after.

Co-owners Stewart and Haas cited the relentless demands and high resource requirements of the sport as reasons for their decision. “It’s part of what makes success so rewarding. But the commitment needed to extract maximum performance while providing sustainability is incredibly demanding, and we’ve reached a point in our respective personal and business lives where it’s time to pass the torch,” said Stewart. The team’s decline was further exacerbated by diminishing support from Ford, which redirected resources to rival teams. And now, two veterans have shed some light on what really went wrong for SHR that ultimately led to its closing.

How modern NASCAR demands restructured teams

In his Happy Hour podcast, Kevin Harvick and Rodney Childers, two of NASCAR’s most respected figures, recently engaged in a candid discussion about the evolution of racing, particularly from the Gen 6 to the Gen 7 car. Their conversation shed light on the challenges faced by teams like SHR during this period. Harvick noted that the downturn at SHR began a few years before its official closure, observing, “The beginning of the failure and the close down of Stewart-Haas Racing really started a couple of years before that. You could kind of see the bottom was falling out of Stewart-Haas Racing. And maybe you saw it different. But when those resources start to deteriorate, Ford shifted a lot of their support to Penske. And Stewart-Haas just slowly lost piece by piece.” As resources dwindled, SHR’s performance declined, culminating in its closure at the end of the 2024 season.

Childers emphasized the necessity for precision in the modern racing environment, stating, “There’s a thousand pieces to put the puzzle together, and you have to do all of them exactly perfect. And obviously, they have really, really good cars right now… I sat beside Billy Scott last weekend and talked for a long time, and his department is different than what mine would be if I was there, right? He’s still coming up with setups for all three cars at 23XI and does a really good job at it. So everybody’s different.” The Gen 7’s complexity demands that every component be optimized. The Next Gen car, originally known as the Gen-7 car, introduced aero and downforce packages while incorporating new technologies, further increasing technical demands on teams.

Harvick then highlighted the significance of organizational structure, noting, “When it went to a structured, organized, very detailed piece of the puzzle from every piece being a part that matters, I think that’s really when the company needed to be restructured in how it worked. And that’s a Gen 7 thing. Penske was more buttoned up from a detailed standpoint. I still think Gibbs, Hendrick, a lot of those were a little more structured from that standpoint. It changed all of them, though.” 

Teams like Penske and Hendrick Motorsports, with their robust infrastructures, were better positioned to succeed in this new era. In contrast, SHR‘s less structured approach struggled to keep pace with the evolving demands, contributing to its eventual closure. Their success was underscored by a culture of excellence, with the No. 4 team, led by Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers, setting a standard of dominance over a decade-long partnership.

On the other hand, Childers discussed the evolving responsibilities of crew chiefs saying, “The crew chief has to manage the people more than anything. He has to run the ship and keep the ship steered in the right direction and help run the organization.” This shift reflects the broader changes the sport has seen, where leadership and organizational skills have become as crucial as technical expertise. The crew chief’s role now encompasses not only car setup and strategy but also team management and resource allocation. This evolution is evident in the success of teams like HMS, where structured leadership has contributed to consistent performance in the Gen 7 era.

In their conversation, Harvick and Childers also reminisced about their time at SHR, acknowledging both the successes and challenges they faced. “Even today, people say that I like doing things my way. That was the only way we could race there. It wasn’t that I liked doing things my way, but I was going to hold people accountable and do it our way, because that’s the only way we could race. And different places didn’t race that way… But Stewart-Haas Racing was just a bunch of racers, and we just worked our guts out. And with the new car, you can’t do that. You really can’t just outwork somebody. I mean, you have to have all the pieces and parts and the details figured out.”

Their insights offer a window into the complexities of modern NASCAR and the factors influencing team dynamics and performance. As the sport continues to evolve, the experiences of veterans like Harvick and Childers provide valuable lessons for current and future teams.

Kevin Harvick slams Saturday night NASCAR schedule

NASCAR fans and insiders are increasingly raising concerns about the sport’s scheduling strategy, particularly with Saturday night races. Kevin Harvick didn’t hold back on his podcast, expressing raw exasperation over recent changes. Reflecting on Richmond, he said, “We go from Saturday to Sunday at Richmond. TV numbers go up. We go from Sunday to Saturday, crowd goes up. … I’m more concerned … how many people are sitting in the grandstands because that’s what makes it go around.”

His blunt critique boiled down to four words: “It makes no sense.” He explained, “Sunday afternoon. Yeah. … There’s no Saturday night racing in the history of NASCAR since the Bristol night races that has scored well in the last five years.” He also highlighted the challenge posed by competing sports, noting that football season further erodes Saturday night viewership.

Backing his comments with hard data, Harvick pointed to Richmond Cup races again, saying, “Richmond Raceway’s Saturday night Cup Series race in 2025 brought in just 1.39 million viewers. This was a steep 37% drop from the prior year’s Sunday event at the same track, which drew 2.22 million.” The numbers reinforce his point that ratings losses of this scale cannot be ignored, signaling a pressing need for NASCAR to rethink its weekend programming.