Rodney Childers knew that Kevin Harvick had a great car in clean air. He also knew that his car when he got behind someone, just wasn’t as good as it should be. Childers, knew the ability of his driver and knew that his talent could keep his No. 4 Ford out front despite having aged tires. They were sick of finishing fourth or worse. After a 21 race winless streak, it was time to make their own magic.

It paid off.

Harvick, on older tires held off a hard charging Denny Hamlin to win Sunday’s Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It was the pit call by Rodney Childers, who said his job now is harder than ever before, that led to Stewart-Haas Racing’s first victory since last November.

I told him this I think it was Monday night, these races are the hardest to call of any of my career,” Childers said. “Whether it’s a 550 race or a 750 race, the tires don’t seem to wear as much.  They don’t seem to fall off as much.  It gives everybody a lot of opportunity to do different things.  So even when you think that you’ve got it right and you put four tires on, you think you’re in the right spot and then a caution comes out and somebody else can put two on or somebody can stay out, it just keeps shuffling.  You saw that at Kentucky and a lot of these places.

“They’re tough.  You know, a lot of it is just confidence and doing what you think is right, and there’s been a lot of weeks where I felt like I didn’t do what was right.  It’s all about just having that confidence again and doing the right thing.”

Childers, said that he was shocked when the leaders hit pit lane when they did and that their decision was already made depending on where they stood in the running order during the closing stages.

“Yeah, the guys that were leading the race, I was really surprised that they pitted,” Childers continued. “When we went green with 80 to go, we had already decided if there’s another caution we’re not going to pit unless we get shuffled back to eighth or ninth and we can maybe put some tires on and drive back up through there.  When I told him to stay out, I honestly thought we would restart somewhere in the first two rows, and then everybody pulled in and we’re sitting there the leader when he comes into sight, and I’m like, what in the world.

“But anyway, you just don’t ever know when that’s going to work out.  I felt like we had a good car the whole race.  Anytime we could get clean air or far enough back from somebody, he was faster than anybody on the racetrack all day long, and then every time we would run somebody down and get within five, six car lengths of them, we would slow down two or three tenths of a lap.

“The clean air was huge today, and honestly, like he said, it was all about getting a good restart.  The 11 (Denny Hamlin and the 20 (Erik Jones) kind of racing each other for a couple laps and getting out there, and it seemed like after four or five laps the tires would kind of equal out.  He did a great job on the restart and got us where we needed to be.”

Restarts are where these races are won now. You have to be as aggressive as ever. With track position playing so key to these races, in order to maintain it, you have to be up on the wheel when it matters the most.

“I said we were leaving on a tow truck or winning the race today,” said Harvick following his second straight win at the Magic Mile. “I think it’s just that point, and the way that racing is now, you — with all the chances that you have to take and whether it’s from strategy or blocking or pushing somebody out of the way, I mean, he did exactly what he was supposed to do, I did what I was supposed to do to try to win the race.  When you’re in position, you just have to lay it all out there and see what happens, and today we came out on the right side of it, so I don’t have to worry about what would have happened.”

Harvick, placed a tip of the cap to Childers’ call and that his jump on the restart ended up allowing him to win the race in the end. His lead mixed with Jones and Hamlin battling for second gave Harvick all he needed to set sail for his first win of the season.

“Really the key to that whole sequence of things was I didn’t have to race the 20.  I got a good jump on the restart.  The 20 and the 11 got me — that racing side by side got me that four- to six-tenth gap, and it pretty much stayed there, and as soon as we ran four or five laps, my confidence level went way up just because of the lap times the car was running, and I could drive it in the corner further and let off the brakes more and everything just got better.

“He never really crept in on me.  We were able to maintain four-tenths to six-tenths, maybe down to three, and then he made a big mistake there with like three or four laps to go, and he got back far enough to where he had some cleaner air and got back to about the same gap.  And I just didn’t want to make big mistakes.  I didn’t want to just miss the entry.  I just needed to hit my marks on entry and get the car rotated, and I really thought we would be fine if it wasn’t for the lap traffic.

Despite being in command, Harvick did admit that he felt like he was a sitting duck on the final restart though.

“I thought we were a sitting duck, yes,” Harvick admitted. “But I knew our car was good, and I just didn’t know what would happen after 35 laps on the tires, but we ran almost two-tenths faster than we’d run all day.  So that’s why sometimes you just have to suck it up from the driver’s compartment and they make the call, and sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, and today it was right because he put us in control of the restart.

“The thing that had comes down to is the call that Rodney (Childers) made and putting us in control of the race.  We got a good restart, and just the lap cars didn’t play out for us, and some of the choices that I made allowed that gap to go away, and then it was defense from there.”