Setting a standard in a sport that competes for 38 weeks a year is difficult. Doing so for 418 weeks over 11 years? A Herculean task.
And yet for over a decade, the No. 4 team at Stewart-Haas Racing has done exactly that. That dynasty will officially come to an end, however, when the checkered flag waves on Nov. 10 at Phoenix Raceway in the finale of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.
The prequel of this final chapter was written a year ago when 2014 champion Kevin Harvick retired from full-time competition. His dominating presence behind the wheel of those machines overseen by Rodney Childers, prepared by car chief Robert “Cheddar” Smith and watched closely by shop foreman Dale Fischlein propelled the No. 4 car into NASCAR lore like no other from the mid-2010s through Harvick’s swan-song season.
MORE: Key moments in SHR history
Today, the four-car team of Stewart-Haas Racing has only days left before it shutters, the team reorganizing in 2025 as Haas Factory Team to field one Cup car and its two Xfinity Series competitors. The reality for Childers set in some time ago, but some days that reality is more apparent than others.
“When it was kind of time to start cleaning out my office,” Childers told NASCAR.com, “that was kind of one of those days that you really start thinking about all the stuff that we’ve done here and the races that we’ve won and all that kind of stuff. And taking stuff home and all that kind of stuff makes you think about all of it.”
Childers is taking those items home in bits at a time “instead of taking a U-Haul home.” At this point, he’d probably need the largest truck they offer anyway. Together, he, Harvick and Co. combined to win 37 races in their 10 years together before Josh Berry hopped into the car for the 2024 campaign.
With the final two races for Stewart-Haas Racing directly in front of the windshield, here’s a look back at what made the No. 4 team so dominant — so feared — in its tenure:
STARTING STRONG
This story begins in the fall of 2013 before the green flag ever waved over the No. 4 car in a points-paying competition.
Childers was in the midst of ending his time at Michael Waltrip Racing, where he’d served as crew chief for five seasons with Waltrip, David Reutimann, Mark Martin and Brian Vickers. His cars over the years — from scoring wins with Reutimann and Vickers at MWR to his prior days with Scott Riggs and Elliott Sadler at Evernham Motorsports — were enough to catch Harvick’s attention. Selected to lead the No. 4 team beginning with the 2014 season, Childers was tasked with piecing together what that group needed to look like.
“Kevin believing in me and giving me a chance was key number one,” Childers said. “The rest was putting together the whole puzzle of getting the right shop foreman and the right car chief and the right people. And I still don’t even know how I did all that.
“I was so blessed to come across such good people, and most of them are still with us 11 years later. And for me, it was life-changing, right? I mean, I had three wins as a Cup crew chief, and now 40 plus the All-Star Race and (34) poles now and all these things that we didn’t have before. So all of us that have been on the 4 car this whole time have been extremely blessed and fortunate to be in this environment, to work with somebody like Kevin and to do things that we did.”
And so preparations began for a Dec. 8, 2013, test at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Multiple teams hit the 1.5-mile oval ready to learn. The No. 4 team, with SHR’s then-alliance with Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet, was ready to dominate.
“Going to this first test, we’re going to treat it like we’re going to win a championship,” Childers recalled. “This isn’t just a test car. This isn’t just a test engine. This isn’t just a test gear. This isn’t a test transmission. Like, I want the best stuff that we possibly have in this building. I want the best engine that we can possibly put in it from Hendrick; the best gear, the best transmission, the best hubs, the best bearings, the best oils. Like, we didn’t just treat it like a test. That was the start of setting that example of this is how we’re going to operate.”
The results were immediate. The car, previously used by the No. 39 team with driver Ryan Newman and stripped, rebuilt and rebuffed by the new No. 4 group, was an immediate rocket.
“I think it really set the tone as to, we didn’t want to beat you. We wanted to beat you badly,” Harvick told NASCAR.com. “We all had a little bit of a chip on our shoulder as to the things that we thought we were capable of doing, and everybody wanted to go prove that.”
Flashback: Inside the No. 4 team after five years
With Daytona only two months away, it was critical for the team to understand the opportunities at hand, what the realistic ceiling for the team could be and the effort needed to achieve those lofty goals.
“It wasn’t just Stewart-Haas at that particular time that wanted this all to work,” Harvick said. “It was also Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports. And I also had to sit down and understand what the alliance was and what we had the capability of using from the resources at HMS, and what we could do with that alliance. And it was something that I felt was pretty important to have in the puzzle to win a championship.”
If you ask Cheddar Smith, that immediate success was a credit to Childers.
“That’s the value that Rodney really brought to the table, right?” Smith said “Like, I can lead the people and we can build the team together. And I can rally the troops and get it done. But Rodney came out of the box at the end of ’13 and knew exactly how he wanted his cars built. He knew exactly what he wanted optimized on the cars straight out of the gate. We had a ton of speed, and it was really special.”
SETTING THE STANDARD
Harvick winning at Phoenix in just his second start with SHR is probably the least shocking part of this story. But despite that instant berth into the newly rebranded elimination-style NASCAR Playoffs, the results didn’t immediately scream “success.”
In their first seven races together, Harvick and the No. 4 team finished 36th or worse four times, twice resulting in DNFs with just two top 10s despite a combined 277 laps led.
“We had a lot of failures and a lot of things go wrong — new team blues,” Harvick said. “But the thing that we never, ever struggled with was how fast we could run. And that was always the piece that we would come back (to). We’d lose a race or have something go wrong or whatever the case was, and the meetings would always end with, ‘Well we had the fastest car, so we just need to get this worked out.””
And did they ever. A win at Darlington Raceway in the Southern 500 in which Harvick led 238 laps ultimately sparked the team’s turnaround in Week 8 of the 2014 season. The tear the No. 4 team proceeded to launch toward was nearly unbelievable. In the inaugural elimination-style playoff era, a win at Charlotte Motor Speedway launched the group into to the Round of 8, in which they scored the walk-off victory at Phoenix Raceway to propel into the Championship 4. At Homestead-Miami Speedway, there was no stopping Harvick, who led 54 laps en route to the team’s crowning moment with a NASCAR Cup Series championship, capping the season with five wins, 14 top fives, 20 top 10s and just those two pesky DNFs from the early portion of the season.
Somehow, some way, they were even better in 2015. Though they fell short in the title race, their statistics were unfathomable: 16 top-two finishes (three of which were wins), 23 top fives, 28 top 10s, one DNF and an average finish of 8.7 across 36 races.
“We were the standard,” Harvick said.
This was a level of dominance not seen since the peak years of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus — at this point, quasi-teammates through the Hendrick alliance — who served as the No. 4 team’s inspiration. That level of success brought an entirely different mindset to each member of the team — to the point where strong second-place finishes weren’t enough.
“I can remember being angry,” Smith recalled. “Like, we would load the car on the lift gate, and the ride up the lift gate, we wouldn’t even speak to each other because we finished second. It felt like we had failed. But it was fun to have those expectations.”
Despite — or perhaps because — of the team’s dominance, how the team carried itself was important to Childers.
“Yes, we had a lot of confidence, but we tried to stay extremely humble, too,” Childers said. “You know, we worked really hard — everybody here at Stewart-Haas did. And we knew that everybody was looking at our stuff every minute that we were at the race track, whether that was pictures, whether that was different things. I mean, we just tried to move things around and do different things every week and keep people looking at all these different things. And sometimes, we would make them look at the wrong things just so they weren’t looking at the right thing.
“But the whole garage definitely looked up to us. They knew that we were going to be fast every week. They knew our little nuances and details of what we were doing and what we were saying and all that kind of stuff. And it was just a lot of fun, really, to be in that position.”
With such dominating results, post-race technical inspection was a journey for a team that flexed every bit of gray area possible.
“It was also new for us to be the ones that had their cars torn apart in tech week after week after week,” Harvick said, “because when you finish second and you finish first and you do that 16 of the 36, events. I mean, your car’s getting torn apart in half the races, repeatedly. And so to continue that success, no matter if they took this away or they took that away or they changed this or didn’t like that, and then you make all those adjustments — I mean, we just kept coming up with what was next.
“And that was something that, especially after the 2014 championship, the first conversation that we had is: OK, how do we keep this championship mentality week after week for the whole season and not go lay an egg in 2015? That was really as important as it was in coming in in 2014 to have a good year was to not go have a bad year after you won the championship and everybody call it a fluke. So we definitely put that to bed. Then it was just, we were just the 4 team after that.”
ESTABLISHING A LEGACY
To perform and execute at that high a level for any period of time was difficult. And yet, this group did so not just week after week but year after year. From 2014 through 2020, Harvick and the No. 4 team won at least twice a season every year — in fact, two was their fewest in that span.
Four wins in 2016. Eight wins in 2018. Nine wins in 2020.
For a decade, this team became nearly untouchable — even despite a manufacturer change to Ford in 2017.
“I think the biggest thing was just a lot of hard work and a lot of communication and a lot of grit,” Childers said. “Just a lot of different things. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep that going and hard to keep that hard work going. You know, the amount of drive it takes to be that competitive all the time was crazy — and to look back on it now is even more crazy.
“The things that we did and the way that we raced … we didn’t take no for an answer at all, and it didn’t matter what it was. We would rebuild a car on Tuesday if we had to, if we knew something was going to make it better. We would re-wrap it twice if we thought something was going to make it better. We were just after it all the time. And I think just that amount of commitment like we were talking about with the people. … To have a group of people that are willing to stay that committed and to have that much grit every single week is hard to find.”
But that was the culture established by Childers, who was unwavering in setting those expectations sky high, and Harvick, whose acceptance of anything less than best efforts drove the team forward. Harvick would tell you as much.
“My group on that car learned really quickly that I was categorized as an (expletive) because of the fact that the expectations that I had were, ‘Hey, you need to do your job, and you need to do it well, and if you’re not going to do it well, we need to go find somebody else,’ ” Harvick said. ” ‘And if you don’t, if you’re not going to do that right, I’m going to call it out, and we’re going to make it so miserable that you’re going to go somewhere else.’ The fortunate thing that I had about that group that we all had with each other was the fact that we could say, ‘Hey, you didn’t do a very good job this weekend. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like that. He didn’t like this, he didn’t like that.’ And everybody would get up and say, ‘OK, we’re gonna make that better. I’ll work on this. You work on that. And what do you want to do tomorrow?’ ”
It was an attitude that permeated the group from top to bottom.
“Rodney is obviously the heartbeat of the team,” Smith said. “He’s a leader. He’s the guy that, on the daily, keeps everybody motivated, and also holds that standard to his culture of we were going to be that way. It was more than just doing what it takes to win. It was the kind of quality of people that we would select. It would be — not only are we going to do everything we can to win, but we’re going to be kind and we’re going to use grace.”
CLOSING THE CHAPTER
And so just two races remain for the No. 4 team at Stewart-Haas Racing.
Berry fills the driver’s seat these days in what was expected to be a multiyear stint with Childers and Co., before the team announced its impending shutdown mid-spring. If only for these 36 races, Berry was able to peek behind the curtain and understand what made this group so good, so strong for so long.
“It starts with Rodney and Cheddar for sure and just the leaders they are and the people they are and the effort that they put into each and every week,” Berry told NASCAR.com. “I think obviously the preparation of the car is one thing, but then just being good leaders with your people and establishing a great culture like they have. I mean, it’s just a great group, honestly.”
Berry knows what’s next for him as the new driver of the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. Likewise, Childers shored up his plans over the summer and will lead the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet with driver Justin Haley. But Berry already has ideas to bring to new crew chief Miles Stanley in 2025.
“There’s most definitely going to be things that I have taken away,” he said, “and I’ve already talked about with with my new group about things that they did and they did well and how I was treated throughout the year and how supportive of me they were and believed in me — just the confidence that they helped build in me, especially early in the season when we were getting started. I think all those things are just so important to the overall health and the culture of the team as you go through such a long season.”
Defining the legacy of a team can be difficult. For car chief Smith, one word came to mind.
“Incomplete,” he said. “I think that there was a lot left for this group to do together. I think that the caliber of people that are on it still and Josh Berry — I would give almost anything in my career to have Josh for another season with the members of the 4 team to show everybody, not only what we’re capable of but what he’s capable of.”
“I don’t think either one of us ever had dreamed that we would be shutting the doors of SHR,” Berry said.
There are a number of team members still on the No. 4 team who have been there since the group’s inception. But no one — not rear changer Dakota Ratcliff nor the two hauler drivers who have been there the whole time — have anything on shop foreman Dale Fischlein.
“He has been a key figure with the whole thing from Day 1,” Childers said. “He was honestly my first person that I was working to hire. Like he was the first house I went to. I mean, I didn’t even wait to try to get him to go anywhere. I just showed up at his house. We had worked together at Evernham (Motorsports). When I knew I needed a shop foreman, I just showed up at his house, knocked on the door, sat at his kitchen table. And I think he appreciated that side of it and has been here ever since.”
At its core, that belief in each member of the team encapsulates what has made Childers successful as a leader.
“I think the legacy of the 4 team is just going out there and doing what we did in 2020 and 2018,” Childers said. “All those years of dominating practice and being the fastest in practice and sitting on poles and all those things. I think that legacy is just to be a champion and be a contender.”
Harvick defines the legacy today by pointing to the team’s work ethic, its character. He points to the preparation, the relentless grind to not let down the person beside you.
“That preparation and that belief that went along with that team,” Harvick said, “is second to none and probably changed the culture for a lot of things that go with the race car and the expectation in the garage to just have everything that you have be set on kill week after week. And it puts a lot of pressure on the other teams, but also it probably changed the culture in many of them as well, because we really looked at Chad and Jimmie and said, ‘OK, if we’re going to beat those guys, there has to be a certain mindset that goes with this.’ And we were fortunate to be able to do that a couple times.”
Harvick’s driving career may be over. Berry, Childers and others may be wearing different teams’ colors in 2025 and beyond.
But the legacy — the standard — of the No. 4 team will not soon be forgotten.
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