Ryan Sparks has been in this position before — balancing Spire Motorsports’ overall ambitions while serving as the crew chief for one of its teams.
It’s why he seems unfazed by having to do it again. Sparks is back atop the No. 7 pit box for Justin Haley after the mutual agreement between Spire and Rodney Childers to part ways after the only off weekend Cup Series teams had.
“No, definitely not,” Sparks told RACER about not expecting this situation to arise. “But sometimes you have to take life as it comes and react appropriately. There is never a good time for any of these things to happen, but we’ll put the headset back on and see if we can get some aggressive strategy. I’ve been known to do some crazy things, so expect to see that again on the broadcast. Hopefully we can keep it up front and start stacking up points and get this No. 7 where it needs to be in the garage.”
Sparks is the competition director at Spire and, when Childers was hired, he transitioned to that sole focus. The dual role is a workload between the interests of the organization’s three cars and the success of the one he’s overseeing. It will mostly happen at the race shop, where Sparks says that’s where races are won.
“When you get to the racetrack, it’s about executing a smooth weekend and setting up your qualifying draw for the next weekend,” he said. “I’ll always pay attention to all three teams [at the track]. Obviously I’ll have to do some due diligence for the No. 7 team only, and the main thing is keeping Justin pumped up and letting him do his thing in the car.”
Sparks and Haley are familiar with each other. Not only did Haley drive for the organization once before, in 2019, but they were also paired together in late 2024 when Haley rejoined the organization.
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“He’s got a tremendous ability; I love working with him,” Sparks said. “He’s so professional. We’re going to have a lot of fun, but we’ve got to get going. We’re 10 races in here and we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
Spire Motorsports has a deeper depth than ever before as the organization expanded its footprint with three cars and added more competition-level personnel. Matt McCall, the director of vehicle performance, is one of those.
Sparks mentioned McCall multiple times. He’s one of the people who will make things easy on Sparks as he serves in multiple roles.
“That is the big difference right now,” Sparks said. “I didn’t have him in last year in my corner. We’ve got him and a lot of great others back in the shop helping push as well, so that makes it a little easier. It just comes down to sleeping less. That’s OK; you can sleep when you’re dead. I love this stuff anyway, so it’s all good.
“We’ve got so much depth and a really tight-knit group at Spire, and everybody pulling the rope in the same direction. It just makes it seamless. We’ve got a great culture that Jeff Dickerson has built — a fun place to be and work. We want to be a legitimate playoff contender. We’re not there yet, and I think people still don’t take us seriously, but when we get that win, they’ll know. That’s the goal this year. It’s easy to talk about it; it’s really hard to do. A lot of people are putting a tremendous amount of effort into trying to be able to do that.”
As for why McCall wasn’t slotted in as crew chief instead of Sparks — it came down to experience.
“I think probably the easy decision was the time Justin and I had together last year,” Sparks said. “He, I, and Matt McCall are basically in lockstep anyway and work closely together. I’m the guy talking on the radio, but we’re all in this together. I think it was just an easy choice, and we didn’t want to take away from what Matt was doing at the shop. He’s doing a great job with all the cars and everything.”
