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The importance of track position for the NASCAR Cup Series at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the stuff of nightmares.
It was even enough to awaken Rodney Childers from a deep slumber early on Sunday morning with an idea for how to get Kevin Harvick to the front of the field after drawing the 11th starting position for the Brickyard 400 earlier in the week.
It was shortly after 3 a.m. that Childers enjoyed an epiphany that changed the course of their race – an idea to short pit for tires just before the scheduled competition caution on Lap 12.
So, it came to pass that the No. 4 would have track position and Harvick never relinquished it for the duration of the race.
"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," Childers said. "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."
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Passing has been historically challenging for stock cars at Indianapolis.
It wouldn’t have been unrealistic to expect Harvick to have slowly and methodically raced his way into the top-five over the first half of the race, but why not try to steal the track position away instead? The current high downforce, low horsepower rules package rewards clean air like nothing before it in the history of the sport, and Harvick was un-passable every time he led the field.
The only thing that could have derailed Harvick and Childers from back to back Brickyard 400 victories was an undercut strategy by Denny Hamlin and Chris Gabehart that briefly gave the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 the lead and all-important clean air.
But Childers’ influence wasn’t over yet.
Despite restarting second to Hamlin with 21 laps to go, Childers told his driver over their radio to keep the pressure on the No. 11 in the closing laps.
"The 11 car has been cording his right sides at the end of every run, FYI," Childers told Harvick at the time. "He's been trying to take care of it. Push him as hard as you can."
Harvick did just that, and Hamlin suffered a right front tire failure from the lead seven laps short of the finish.
"Our tires did pretty good," Childers said. "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.
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"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."
In a season in which crew chief decisions have been magnified due to the importance of track position, Harvick was quick to point out all the ways Childers gave him what he needed on Sunday.
"Yeah, we had great tire wear today," Harvick said. "They hit the cambers and everything right on. I was able to really push my car hard, as hard as I could push it. We still never got the handling 100% right. I was able to push him a little bit harder that last run than I had been before. I was able to stay a little bit closer. With the sun going down, the pace really picked up. The corner speed started to pick up, lap times started to pick up as well. We knew they were close on tire wear."
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The win was the 30th for Harvick and Childers since their pairing in 2014. They won the championship that season and have been threats each year since.
"We've been able to do some special things together," Childers said. "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."
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Rodney Childers Makes All the Right Calls in 30th Win with Kevin Harvick - Autoweek
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