Entire Roush Fenway Organization firing on all eight
Remember last year? Yeah I am sure you can, just like me. It was dreadful, losing to the 18 car every weekend on the NASCAR Nationwide Series side, and not seeing a Roush Fenway Ford win a Sprint Cup Series event until August? If you are a Roush Fenway fan, you dreaded seeing the performance.
This year, however, totally different ball game. After seeing a very dominating performance from the 16 and 60 today in the Nationwide Series race, its clear to see that this team is on a roll. Kyle Busch had been a pest in the side of everyone at Roush Fenway at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the last two seasons in the Joe Gibbs Toyota’s. Now, with the new FR9 package under the hood of the Ford Mustangs in Nationwide, they can compete with the power of the Toyota engine that dominated them on the intermediate ovals since 2008. Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., have all won with the engine powerplant this season in their cars, and with the signs of Charlotte, Roush has more power to offer against Gibbs in Nationwide.
On the Sprint Cup side, Edwards has been nothing but spectacular in the 99 car. His win at Las Vegas and his million dollar dominance at Charlotte in the All Star race have given a great deal of relief for all of the fans. Matt Kenseth won at Dover, and even though it was in the Wood Brothers Ford, Trevor Bayne scored the season opener in Daytona. Edwards can recall when he first could feel the change coming around for Roush and Ford.
“I remember when I first saw it and that was Daytona last summer. The first time I really believed we were back was about 50 laps or 40 laps into the Phoenix Cup race this year,” said Edwards after his second place run in Charlotte on Saturday. Yes, we did crescendo with our performance all the way until Homestead last year and then I thought, ‘Man, I’m not gonna get too excited. I’ve got to go through a long winter here,’ and I was anxious to see how fast we would be when we got back to the race track in the spring and it’s picked up even better than it left off.”
I saw the glimpses of it at Daytona and then it took all the way until about Phoenix this year for me to really feel like, ‘Hey, we are back,’ and feel that confidence and that’s good. It feels like it’s here to stay. I hope it can last the rest of the season. That would be huge. Ten wins out of how many races, it can’t be too many, so that’s a very big percentage.”
The weekend of Dover, however, after Matt Kenseth scored his second win of the season; NASCAR took all four of the car manufacturers to the dyno. All tested within 1% of one another, while many, had been feeling the FR9 Ford packed more horse power than the other 3 engines. Many fans wondered last year on why Ford did not put the engine straight on the race track to race against the others. Now you know why. Ford did their homework before they brought this engine into the series and they’ve been very, very good. They have been very good on the 1.5 mile tracks, Edwards won at Las Vegas, Kenseth won at Texas, Edwards dominated at Darlington, and they have won at the one mile Dover track with Kenseth. These are places where aerodynamics play a part and some people feel now it is the cooling system on these cars that have given them advantage by adding more tape to the nose of the car.
We are fixing to be going into the very hot summer and there are some tracks on the schedule that are going to be very good for Roush.
- June 5 – Kansas Speedway
- June 12 – Pocono Raceway
- June 19 – Michigan Speedway
- July 9 - Kentucky Speedway
- July 30 – Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- August 7 – Pocono Raceway
- August 27 – Bristol Motor Speedway
- September 4 – Atlanta Motor Speedway
- September 10 – Richmond International Raceway
These are going to be very solidified dates for the Ford camp. Especially Roush Fenway Racing who has dominated some of the venues in the past, like Michigan where they have won more races than anyone else. With the new engine package and the aero advantage that it appears that they have, Roush could be going through a winning Summer.
