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Sprint Cup
CUP: Roush – Ford Season Not Lost
No Ford driver has won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race this season...
Roush Fenway Racing co-owner Jack Roush has survived two aviation accidents. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Will this be the week that Ford gets well?
That remains to be seen, but Jack Roush, the Blue Oval’s most prominent Sprint Cup team owner, doesn’t see a lot of sickness, anyway.
Ford hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race since last November, but three of Roush’s drivers are in the top 12 in the point standings. Matt Kenseth rides fourth, Carl Edwards is ninth and Greg Biffle is 10th.
Everybody wants to win, but it hasn’t been a lost season, Roush said Tuesday.
“We started off the season with not as good a setup in the cars based on the [computer] simulations that had been done,” Roush said. “We’re looking to fill that void. We’ve had not our share but close to our share of top-10 finishes. We have three cars in the Chase. It has not been a bad year. Hopefully, we’ll be able to succeed at MIS and rack up our 12th win there.”
Michigan International Speedway, site of Sunday’s Cup race, has produced 11 Cup wins for Roush cars.
Roush said the fact that NASCAR does not allow testing at Cup tracks has put heavy pressure on the simulation programs that teams use to try to duplicate track conditions in preparation for racing.
“The no-testing policy has put a great premium on the software that’s used to do the predictive and simulation things,” he said. “We’ve got third-party members that were engaged in our data analysis and simulations. Quite frankly, we haven’t gotten the results this year that we expected. Given the fact that we don’t have testing, that has been a handicap.
“We’re looking to add third-party vendors, and we’re taking more things inside ourselves at Roush Fenway. So we’re trying to fill that void, one we hadn’t expected.”
Nine teams are scheduled to run Ford’s new FR9 engine at MIS as the company moves closer to making the engine full-time in the Sprint Cup series. Roush said development work on the engine this year has not been a factor in souring Ford performance.
“The FR9 engine has been wonderful,” he said. “It’s all encouraging. The old engine had done a nice job. But this was an opportunity to get better fuel economy and better performance in the cooling area that the old engine didn’t have in terms of its components.
“Once we started to get positive results, which came very early with information coming from the Wood Brothers, then we started to speed up production of the various components to be able to make a rollout for all the teams.”
Roush, who said he supports a return of limited testing by Cup teams, said he expects the new engine to be in general use at every track the rest of the season, with the possible exceptions of the road courses.
Roush said recent driver incidents at Cup events have made the sport more interesting.
“It’s real,” he said. “It’s not staged. This is not the World Wrestling Association. It’s real. When people care as much as they care and try as hard as they try, emotions spill over.”
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
That remains to be seen, but Jack Roush, the Blue Oval’s most prominent Sprint Cup team owner, doesn’t see a lot of sickness, anyway.
Ford hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race since last November, but three of Roush’s drivers are in the top 12 in the point standings. Matt Kenseth rides fourth, Carl Edwards is ninth and Greg Biffle is 10th.
Everybody wants to win, but it hasn’t been a lost season, Roush said Tuesday.
“We started off the season with not as good a setup in the cars based on the [computer] simulations that had been done,” Roush said. “We’re looking to fill that void. We’ve had not our share but close to our share of top-10 finishes. We have three cars in the Chase. It has not been a bad year. Hopefully, we’ll be able to succeed at MIS and rack up our 12th win there.”
Michigan International Speedway, site of Sunday’s Cup race, has produced 11 Cup wins for Roush cars.
Roush said the fact that NASCAR does not allow testing at Cup tracks has put heavy pressure on the simulation programs that teams use to try to duplicate track conditions in preparation for racing.
“The no-testing policy has put a great premium on the software that’s used to do the predictive and simulation things,” he said. “We’ve got third-party members that were engaged in our data analysis and simulations. Quite frankly, we haven’t gotten the results this year that we expected. Given the fact that we don’t have testing, that has been a handicap.
“We’re looking to add third-party vendors, and we’re taking more things inside ourselves at Roush Fenway. So we’re trying to fill that void, one we hadn’t expected.”
Nine teams are scheduled to run Ford’s new FR9 engine at MIS as the company moves closer to making the engine full-time in the Sprint Cup series. Roush said development work on the engine this year has not been a factor in souring Ford performance.
“The FR9 engine has been wonderful,” he said. “It’s all encouraging. The old engine had done a nice job. But this was an opportunity to get better fuel economy and better performance in the cooling area that the old engine didn’t have in terms of its components.
“Once we started to get positive results, which came very early with information coming from the Wood Brothers, then we started to speed up production of the various components to be able to make a rollout for all the teams.”
Roush, who said he supports a return of limited testing by Cup teams, said he expects the new engine to be in general use at every track the rest of the season, with the possible exceptions of the road courses.
Roush said recent driver incidents at Cup events have made the sport more interesting.
“It’s real,” he said. “It’s not staged. This is not the World Wrestling Association. It’s real. When people care as much as they care and try as hard as they try, emotions spill over.”
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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