Richard Childress Racing decided the best way to go faster in the future was to slow Mike Verlander's promotion to team president.

The Jacksonville native spent nearly a year learning every nuance of stock-car racing before taking over at the start of the NASCAR season. Now in charge, Verlander has meticulously invigorated the team's gradual return to prominence.

Childress once owned an elite car. Starting in 1986, he won six championships in nine years with Dale Earnhardt as his driver and finished second in the standings three times.

But the last decade has been a struggle. His teams haven’t finished better than 11th since 2015.

Verlander spent 14 years as the executive VP of Stewart-Haas Racing and later as president of Kyle Busch Racing before accepting the role of Chief Operating Officer at RCR — a stepping stone to becoming the president two weeks before the season-opening Daytona 500 two months ago.

“When I was at Stewart-Haas, I had an opportunity to learn the other side of the house – all things commercial, sponsorship, marketing, all the revenue sides,” Verlander said.

“What I did not know, and really, what I wanted to learn, was more about the competition side. I don't know 1% of what these guys ran, just more than the management of the folks. Communication, the process, the culture – whether it's competition, accounting, marketing, culture is paramount success.”

When he went to work for Kyle Busch, he was immersed in the business's human resources department and accounting side.

Verlander is the brother of Alan Verlander, whose Airstream Adventures has a contract with the Clay County Tourism Department to bring events to the area, such as the Sunshine State Games, Inspire Dance Competitions, ProWater Cross and High School Cross Country Invitational.

Once at Childress, Mike Verlander spent several weeks at each shop, gaining first-hand knowledge of the intricacies of making a race car.

“I have a good grasp on the race team,” Verlander said. “RCR is a lot bigger today than just race teams. Richard is here to win races, but we have a big engine-building operation. Obviously, NASCAR and motorsport are big, but we also do some real-world application stuff. We've got a military manufacturing business. We make custom vehicles. We have a contract with the Special Operations Command. We're building these six-by-six-wheel vehicles for Special Operations soldiers.

"Richard is a loyal old-school owner. We're going to do it the right way.”

Verlander said poor pit stops and inconsistent cars plagued the two RCR Cup Series drivers—Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon—in 2024. During the learning process, Verlander focused on studying the processes.

He noticed during pitstop practices, the team sometimes laughed at mistakes. He found nothing funny about that, so he made changes to put the focus on precision. The result was strikingly quicker stops this season.

“Richard deserves to have a better NASCAR effort,” Verlander said. “That’s not a knock at anybody. They've done a great job weathering the storm.

"Let’s focus on returning it to where he deserves it. I’ve told Richard and all our drivers, that's where it was when I came here. ‘Guys, we’ve got to remember, this is like Novocain. It's not going to take immediately. We're going to have to be consistent and disciplined, and in time, we'll look up and realize we're a lot better.’

“You’re going to see a much different Richard Childress Racing this year,” Childress said. “Just wait.”