“If you are a little free and it hits the limiter, it’s gone.” Joey Logano said these words on Sunday. He highlighted how his first victory of the 2025 Cup Series season risked falling into the Texas trap. Ever since Texas Motor Speedway was reconfigured in 2017, problems have plagued NASCAR racers. From navigating the inconsistently built turns to carefully avoiding the highest part of the track, drivers’ plates are full. But what frightens most of them is a nasty bump above the tunnel in Turns 3 and 4.
The Würth 400 presented by Liqui Moly witnessed a whopping 12 cautions over 73 laps. Of the 13 drivers who led laps in Sunday’s race, eight were involved in crashes, collisions, or spins. This calamitous situation drew raised eyebrows from the community, and a veteran has only one solution for it.
A former champion directs NASCAR to the issue
Rodney Childers hit the news recently for the wrong reasons. The NASCAR veteran recently lost his place as a Spire Motorsports crew chief for Justin Haley’s No. 7 team. However, Childers’s wealth of experience as the winningest crew chief in the Cup Series precedes his reputation. Most notably, Childers fetched the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series title with Kevin Harvick at Stewart-Haas Racing. What is more, Harvick owns 9 victories at Texas Motor Speedway, three of which he clinched with Childers. The veteran has tackled the Lone Star State track even before its reconfiguration, and hence must have the perfect judgment of its present state. The 1.5-mile intermediate has evolved immensely over the past few years, giving drivers endless problems with its bizarre build. But Childers offered NASCAR a way out of this mess.
In a recent episode of ‘Door, Bumper, Clear’, Childers appeared as a guest to shed light on Texas. Turns 1 and 2 are wider and more flattened, while Turns 3 and 4 are different, so the drivers need to adjust their speeds. The Next-Gen car makes things worse – a car trying to race side-by-side often leads to the car on the outside bottoming out and immediately spinning into the outside wall. So the NASCAR veteran gave his insights: “I mean, it’s an odd-shaped corner…Even with the old car, like the entry into Turn 1, we would treat it as a short track. We’ve had all of our short track brake stuff to be able to get into Turn 1 and not get loose.”
Is what makes the track at Texas “weird” also what makes it good?
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Eventually, the problem boils down to one aspect – the horrible bump off Turns 3 and 4. Josh Berry led 41 of 271 laps, but when his No. 21 Ford found the bump, he crashed midway through Stage 2, leaving him to finish 32nd. So Rodney Childers offered his 6-word solution: “Get rid of that one bump.” He continued, “You know, if you could just grind just that one bump – I’m not saying grind the whole racetrack or anything – but if you could get rid of that one bump, maybe some guys could move up further.”
DBC host Freddie Kraft also shared his insights on the unique track. The highest part of the track is completely unusable, as some drivers have shared it feels like “falling off a cliff.” Kraft said, “It’s just so crazy to me. We go into that big, wide, sweeping Turn 1. And you can’t even consider going above the third lane of the racetrack at either end. And it’s got probably 6 or 7 lanes wide.” He added, “I’m just worried if you take that tire advantage away at some point, you’re going to go back to where we can’t pass each other.”
While Rodney Childers rolls out life-saving advice for NASCAR, his former driver clinched a milestone in Texas. Kevin Harvick just got inducted into another Hall of Fame.
Recognized for his racing feats
Well, everybody is well aware of what a phenomenon Kevin Harvick is in NASCAR. The former Stewart-Haas Racing driver hung up his firesuit in 2023, bidding adieu to a career of brilliance. Over two decades of racing yielded 60 Cup Series race victories and a grand 2014 championship. Nestled amidst these big titles are Harvick’s milestones at Texas Motor Speedway. Harvick is a nine-time winner at TMS across all three NASCAR national series. In the Fall race of 2017, he snapped a 29-race Cup Series winless drought at “The Great American Speedway.” Subsequently, he won the Fall event for three consecutive seasons (2017-2019). In 39 career starts, he also posted 25 top-10 finishes, with 13 of those being top fives, and a pair of poles. Now, the Fort Worth track hails the former Cup Series racer’s massive achievements.
Kevin Harvick arrived at TMS for the first time in 1997 in a Chevrolet Astro rental van. And 29 years later, he proudly exits as a Texas Motorsports Hall of Famer. He was officially inducted into the Texas Motorsports Hall of Fame during Friday’s Speedway Children’s Charities luncheon presented by Würth in The Speedway Club Ballroom. Harvick expressed his heartfelt gratitude on receiving this honor. “Anytime that you can go to the racetrack to be honored for something you did there to be successful is always a lot of fun. This racetrack has just been high on the success list for our teams, and above and beyond all that, is all that they’ve done for racing and my career. And Marcus (Smith, Speedway Motorsports president and CEO) and I are great friends. So to be able to have this honor is quite special.”
Evidently, both former driver and crew chief remain intimately connected with Texas. Let us wait and see if NASCAR pays heed to Rodney Childers’ advice or not.
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