[bouncy piano music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today got his start in racing as a one man show.

He was the driver, the mechanic, and the engine builder all in one.

He went on to build a NASCAR dynasty with his team earning more than 200 victories.

Today, his grandchildren are earning their own successes on the track as part of his team.

We're talking fast wheels and good wine with NASCAR Hall of Famer, Mr. Richard Childress.

- [Male Announcer] Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Female Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine.

To friendly faces doing more than their part.

And, to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Male Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

[high intensity chord] - Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated.

Your local bottler.

[upbeat guitar music] [upbeat orchestral music] - Richard, welcome to Side by Side.

You are a legend across North Carolina and across America.

What you have done has been an amazing life lived well.

I gotta ask you, you have won 200 victories and, now you have a grandson who's winning championships.

How does that feel, Richard?

- Yeah, I like to start out by saying, here's a kid with a dream when I was about 17, 18 years old and an old $20 race car, sitting here today having a conversation with you.

Talking about my grandsons and the history of RCR and racing.

But, to have my grandsons driving today.

I have two of them, Austin Dillon and Ty Dillon.

And they're both winners.

They've won championships and it's just an honor.

It does me good to watch them.

And now they have their own children and great grandchildren for me.

So, it's an honor to watch it and have fun.

- Richard, as a, as a spectator myself, it is a dangerous sport.

Did you talk your grandkids into doing it or did they just wake up one day and say, "Grandpa, I want to do that.

"I want to go out there racing that car and may God be on my side as I do this dangerous sport."?

- Well, they were raised in the sport 'cause I was a driver and a car owner and, and I was afraid it was going to happen.

I tried to get them involved in golf and soccer and football and everything else.

But one day Ty Dillon called me and he said, "Pop Pop, you said, 'If we ever want to race, give you a call.'"

The most expensive call I think I've ever had.

- How old was he?

- He was 13.

- Wow.

- And Austin was 15.

- And what did you do?

You took him out in the car?

- Took him over to Charlotte, bought a couple of Bandolero cars, smaller cars to get started.

And it didn't do too good the first time.

Carried them back the second time, it's like a light switch went on and both of them were good.

And they've won in everything they've ever driven.

- So, so Richard, I want to understand.

So is, is the car really dangerous or is it built in such a way that the driver is eternally protected when you have a, a crash?

- You know, I think the innovation of safety has came so far.

There was a time back when I drove, that, you know, there was a lot of drivers that we would lose.

And, we lost Dale Earnhardt in 2001.

And when that happened, it woke everyone up even more about safety.

Today, the cars are safer than they've ever been.

But, accidents, accidents can happen and they will happen in racing.

But, we do everything we can to keep our drivers safe.

But, there's still that element of danger.

- What, what makes, what makes racing so popular?

- You know, it's the number two sport in America today behind the NFL and, it's getting more and more popular.

I think the, the fans, our spectators, can relate to someone in their cars.

Still a Ford versus Chevy.

And on a Monday morning, you know, you win on Sunday you sell on Monday.

And so it's a, it's a sport.

Then we have great corporations involved, General Motors, Ford, I've been with Dow.

We have great companies, Caterpillar.

We got so many great countries that we've been involved with over the years.

And, to get them in there and get them supporting our sport.

And television.

Television has carried us to a whole 'nother level.

- And, and, and it's a big business is it not?

The sponsorships that, I mean, I toured your place.

For example, you have a, you have a museum there.

You have a, I was surprised how many engineers you hire.

- Yes, we, today we have close to 50 engineers.

The sport's constantly changing and its a moving target to stay competitive just like in anything.

And, but we've been fortunate.

We've been there now, I think 55, 56 years.

And we, we've been very fortunate.

And it goes back to people.

You gotta have the right people for success.

You gotta have the right partners, which I call our sponsors to move to the next level.

And, the race fans, they play such a major part in our sport.

- How does this work?

You, you actually have a team that calls on a company and, and gets them to sponsor a car?

Or do they sponsor a driver?

Or do they sponsor a race?

What do they sponsor?

And why are they so many decals on a car?

- Yeah, well, it, it, today's world it takes so many different companies involved with one team and one driver.

We have, we'll have four drivers next year.

We got three this year, we're going to increase ours.

But, I think it changes year by year.

We have some sponsors that'll come to us and say, "What do we got to do to get involved with you?"

Or with Austin or Ty, whoever the driver may be.

And but then, we also have a business development group, and I have a company in New York city that we work with that goes and contacts us.

And, and we have a great, great group of folks at RCR that's able to go out.

And we, we work for these companies.

If we got Coca-Cola as a sponsor, for instance, we work for them.

I look at everybody says, "You don't have anyone you work for."

I worked for every sponsor we have, and that's what makes this business so great.

- What is the sponsor looking for?

Is it viewership on television?

A number of people who attend the race?

What are they looking for?

- Some of them like to have it for the TV and the, the seats and eyeballs in the stands.

But, a lot of them do it with B2B working.

And some of them do it with B2C.

So, you got to have all of these.

- B2B, business to business?

- Yeah, and business to a customer client.

- Yes.

- And, you know.

- I mean, they invite them to come.

They give them a sort of a complimentary tickets to come to the races and so on?

- Yes.

Or for instance, we may have a company that, that we were doing business with that wanted to do business with another company.

We'll hook them up together and they'll go, they'll go work together.

You know, for instance, Bass Pro Shop and Hook Apparel.

We're working on trying to hook them up today.

And Textron, which does the easy go and the tracker off-road, and Bass Pro.

You know, all of this works together in our sport.

- So Richard, how does, how does?

How does Austin get into a race?

Does he get invited to go race?

Does he apply to be in the race?

Do you pay to be in the race?

How do they pick which ones are going to race on a given day?

- Well, now we have what we call the RTA, which is the Race Teams Alliance.

And, we have worked a contract with NASCAR that 36 positions are guaranteed to start that race.

And Austin, or I have two of those positions I'm guaranteed every week we're gonna start.

- I see.

- And then Austin for instance, he, he, he drives for me, our company, and we pay him to drive in the sponsors that we, he has endorsements companies that he endorses on the side.

So, that's how the drivers are compensated.

- And, so how does a new driver get into this 36 guaranteed?

- I, the two drivers I'm just now hiring for next year run in the truck series.

It's a series that, The Camping World Truck Series.

And then now we're gonna move them to the Xfinity series, which is the next level up, like Minor League Baseball.

And then you'll move them from there, they'll move into the Cup Series like Austin.

Austin won championships in the Truck.

Won championships in the Xfinity.

Now we're chasing that Cup championship.

And, Ty won championships in ARCA.

So he's moved up.

He's went through the different series.

And won races.

- Tell me about the pit stop.

Most fascinating part to me.

They stop and bam, a bunch of people attack that car, change the tires.

It seems like three seconds.

- Yeah.

- Well what, what, how many seconds should it be?

- Well, it's like poetry in motion.

These guys know everything.

Every movement, every step counts.

And we can do a stop today, if we do a good stops in the high leavens, 12s are okay, anything in 13 seconds.

- Seconds?

11 or 12 seconds?

- Yes.

That's for four tires and 18 gallons of fuel.

- My goodness.

- And the technology has changed in equipment to get us around a car, to get us to do it.

These guys, every one of them, are athletes.

I mean, they, we work out, we train them, we, we have a trainer.

- They work full time for you?

- Yes.

- And they train how to do that?

- Yes.

And, they practice every week And just like a football team, you got to have a coach and you got to have trainers.

And, we got all of that at our shop.

Medical ladies that work up there, to work on them if they need it.

- Do you miss racing yourself?

- You know, Dr. Qubein I did to start with.

I got out of the car in 1981 and put Dale Earn...

I ran the first 20 races and put Dale Earnhardt in, back then for the last 10.

And I, boy, I felt like going to that first race and not being a driver, I was totally lost.

So, I missed it for about the first year.

And, then I said, "You know, I'm kind of enjoying watching."

- Watching what's happening.

- And making and, we won our first race, Cup race with Ricky Rudd in 1982 at Riverside, California.

And then we brought Dale in in 84.

So, those are the things that history is all about.

- Well, let's talk about wine.

I want to know what is it that a NASCAR race driver knows about wine, Richard.

You built the Childress wineries and vineyards.

And, you're doing very well with it.

What got you in it?

What got you interested in it?

And, why would you take such a risk?

- You know, people say, "Well, you know, if you want to make a million dollars, you start with it and you lose it."

But, I use to go to Riverside, California in the early seventies.

And, Riverside and Ontario was actually a bigger wine country than Napa was at the time, or as big.

And, we'd go there after practice and qualifying and you'd drink wine.

It was free.

So I said, "Someday, I want to get a winery."

And then, we went to Sonoma and started racing there in the Finger Lakes in New York.

Met a lot of friends.

And I said, "You know, I'm going to do a winery."

And had it all planned.

And 9/11 happened.

I was going to do a small winery at my farm.

9/11 happened and I changed my mind on how to build all of our company buildings and everything.

So, we built a winery where it is and it's one of the funnest, greatest things I've done.

And it's became a really good, successful business.

- How does one build the winery?

- Well, we, you start out by planting your grapes and having a vision and getting the right people.

It's like in everything that you do here.

Everywhere we go, it's all about people.

That's my saying, I'm just Richard Childress.

I wouldn't be here or do anything if it wasn't for all the people that I've been able to surround myself with.

You hire the right people.

You have the vision of how you want it.

- But, how did you know how to hire the right people in a business you knew nothing about?

- I knew a little about it from knowing the friends and meeting the people in California.

- Okay.

- I was educating myself.

I read several books on how to, about wine.

- I see.

- To educate myself a little bit before I just dove in.

And, I started looking at really top winemakers.

I think the first thing we needed was to get a winemaker that was world-class, that had so much success.

Mark Friszolowski is our winemaker and been there since day one.

And, he is such a, he helps make it.

You gotta have a good product to keep growing.

And, we started out with a couple of thousand cases and today we're over 80,000 cases in sales.

And, hopefully in another year we'll hit 100,000.

That's one of the goals I have.

- Is that a per year?

- Yes.

Oh yeah.

We did 80,000 cases a year.

- Per year.

And you sell it to who?

Restaurants?

Or individuals?

- Yeah.

We had the winery itself.

We do probably 40%, 30% there maybe.

And then, we do weddings and all of these different things.

But then, we have a wholesale group that's out.

I think we're in seven states.

And, that's where we sell most of the wine is in grocery stores and chains and restaurants.

- So Richard, you're in the wine business.

You are in the racing business in a big way.

How many employees do you have at RCR?

- We have about 450 right now.

- 450?

So, 50 of them are engineers.

What do the other 400 do?

- Work on everything from building the chassis to the cars.

We're self efficient.

We do everything at our race shop, shops down there.

We have a machine shop that builds all of our stuff.

We have an engine shop that is called ECR, that we build all of our engines.

We have a big customer base, too.

We build engines for like seven or eight other teams in the Cup.

We'll be building eight customers in the Xfinity next year.

So, we have a big customer base and we build cars for other customers.

And now we're, we branched out into military.

And so.

- In the military?

- Yeah.

- What do you do in the military?

- Well, we just built a concept vehicle for the I think it was the special forces.

And now, we're going to build some more of them.

It's a six by six that they're using.

We do a lot of work for General Dynamics and FN.

A lot of companies like that.

That we build a lot of, do a lot of prototype working.

And, we have a big project now with with the BEV.

Believe Energy Ventures, which is a very, very, very interesting.

I got in for that, anybody that tells you they don't do it for the money, they're lying.

We, we, you gotta make a profit.

But, for what they're trying to do for the environment, that's why I wanted to be involved with it.

- Interesting.

So, you have diversified measurably from just racing in NASCAR racing?

- Yes.

One of the things, the talent that we have at RCR and ECR and just moved one of my businesses down from Indiana to Lexington, Davidson county.

We've got these, it's called Childress Technologies.

We do a lot of different work over there.

So, you got to diversify in today's world 'cause, NASCAR came with a new car, the next gen car.

And, I could see it four or five years ago where the sport was headed.

So, that's when I started diversifying more and more out.

- And, and you have done a lot in the charitable world.

I'm familiar, for example, with some of them.

Children's medical, children's functions at Wake Forest.

What is that?

What does it do?

- That's the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma.

Pediatric trauma is the number one killer of our children in America today.

It's more than all the other diseases.

Everything you can think of.

- What is pediatric trauma?

- That is a small child that falls, or riding a four wheeler and flips over and hurts himself, or football, soccer.

- I see.

- You know, we do a lot of work with Wake Forest and University of Virginia with helmets, and ways to prevent first.

And then, we have the medical staff.

It's nationwide that we work a lot of hospitals all over the country to bring in knowledge and help the research.

When a child does get hurt, what is the best thing we can do?

When an accident happens and if it's a child, or a person like you and I, they're going to come to us first because, a lot of them don't know what to do for that child.

So, we're educating that.

- That must be very fulfilling for you to know that you have used some of your success in life to help others in this way.

- Yes.

I think our family, we all wanted to do this.

To go out and, children is our future.

Any way you look at it and I've got great grandchildren today and grandchildren.

They'll have children.

So, the future of this country is in their hands.

And we had to do everything who can protect them.

Children does get hurt.

Also working with a group called Roc Solid Foundation, which we go out and build these plat sets for children that have cancer.

Small children.

'Cause the first thing a child loses when they find out they got cancer is the right to go out and play.

So, we go to their homes and build a play set.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- And where do you do that?

- Wherever the child's needed.

You know, we go, we have programs all over.

I'm involved with them.

It's ran out of Virginia.

I think we built maybe 14 or 15 play sets, RCR and ECR.

Great team building opportunities.

- Yes.

- But, to see the families smile and tears when you see a child that has cancer and you bring a smile, they forget all about cancer.

So, those are the things I really enjoy is doing stuff for our children.

- Yes.

And we thank you for doing all of that, Richard.

Tell me about, you know, you you're, you're, you're not retired.

You're very active in the business.

You get up early in the morning and go to work and stay there all day?

Do you direct the strategic planning?

Are your chair of the board?

What do you do?

- A little bit of all that.

But you know, I try to get in bed at nine and I'm up at five usually.

And get ready to sit in there and go over a lot of stuff that I want to do that day.

I walk for two and a half miles in the morning around the vineyards at my house.

And, but I, I run the board.

I'm still the CEO.

I have two presidents or three now, that run different areas of businesses I have.

I work directly with most of them.

And, I like to not micromanage.

I like to see people go out and do their thing and I'm there to help them.

Or, if I see something I need to say, "Hey, we need to take a look at this way."

That's the way I do business.

But, I'm very, very blessed to be where I am today health wise, knock on wood.

We all are.

And, to be able to go and do the things that I still like to do.

- Yes.

Richard, if you had to live your life over again, what would you do differently?

- There's only two or three maybe things I would do different.

You know, I would have served in the military during the Vietnam war.

But, my daughter Tina was born and I didn't get to go in at that time.

I would have liked to had served in the military.

So, today I do everything we can for our military possible.

'Cause we owe it to our military, they're the reason we're all here today.

Probably the second thing, I would have spent more time with my daughter when I was coming up because I was racing.

I was traveling all over the U.S. racing and didn't really have the opportunity.

But, today I spend more time with Austin and the great grandchildren 'cause they're at the racetracks.

So, that's a couple of things I would do.

- What's next for you?

- That's a good question.

I want to write that book I've been about for several years.

- Yes.

It's an autobiographical book you want to write?

- Oh yes.

- Yes.

- I think that, you know, I'd like to work on that here in another year.

And, I want to win another championship in the Cup.

I love winning.

And, life's about winning I think.

If anything you do, you want to be good at it.

And, I want to see that.

I want to success for all of our businesses.

- Who in your journey in life that you met, that you value tremendously?

A person you met, a mentor, a teacher, a partner.

- You know, I've had a couple.

I go back so many years.

I used to work at Douglas Battery in Winston-Salem.

And Mr. GW Douglas.

Just watching him and listening to him and him taking me kind of under his wings at that time.

And, having me to take responsibility at 19, 18, 19 years old, 20 years old.

And then, Mr. Bill France, Jr was probably my biggest mentor.

I had mentors in racing, Junior Johnson.

But I think Bill France Jr had taught me as much about business and success.

And, you know, that.

They're two that really stand out and Junior Johnson from the racing side.

- What is it that you want people to remember you for?

You've done many things.

You have a lot of fans.

You made a lot of connections across the country and beyond.

What is it that would make you happy that you would say people remember Richard Childress for what?

- That he was honest.

He always spoke what he felt.

And, he was a very honest person when it come to being with, around people and friends and family.

And, I just think that to me the ethics in life is big.

And, I want people to remember me as this guy was a very ethical person.

And, not so much about racing and winning championships and stuff like that.

That's great.

That's history.

But, when someone's talking about you, you want to say, "Well, this guy was one guy you could believe in, he was an honest dude."

- What is the one thing you would tell Austin and Ty as they're winning now races and they're becoming famous in their own right?

What do you tell them as a reminder for good living?

- You know I think, look out for the future.

We all, you know, be prepared for anything that you can in the future.

Be honest.

Be respectful.

And, NASCAR is the reason we're all here, our family and both of them.

Be honest with our race fans and give them everything you can.

If you walk over a kid wants an autograph and you got to somewhere, take that extra second.

And you can take a second, out of your your life, a few seconds and change a memory in someone's life forever.

- And, NASCAR drivers are very good at that.

They're very, very caring for the fans.

Richard it's wonderful to have you with me Side by Side.

Best wishes and I look forward to reading that book.

- Okay.

Thank you.

And thank you for everything you have done for our area and community.

Wouldn't be here without you.

- Thank you, sir.

- [Male Announcer] The funding for a Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Female Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine.

To friendly faces doing more than their part.

And, to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Male Narrator] The Budd group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

[high intensity chord] - Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated.

Your local bottler.

[upbeat guitar music]