RacingNation.com

Roush-Fenway Ready To Begin New Chapter In 2015

 Darrell Wallace Jr, Ryan Reed, Chris Buescher, Elliott Sadler, Trevor Bayne, (front row) Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Greg Biffle, and Jack Roush look on as Doug Rice speaks during day 3 of the NASCAR Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour.  [Credit: Jared C. Tilton/NASCAR via Getty Images]

Charlotte, NC— This is not same Roush-Fenway Racing race fans have been accustomed to. That was the message members of the organization conveyed to the media in attendance at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom as they laid out changes implemented to turn around a disappointing 2014 campaign.

Roush-Fenway Racing will enter three cars in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2015 and will field four entries in the NASCAR XFinity Series. Greg Biffle returns to the #16 Ford with crew chief Matt Puccia while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. remains in the #17 ride with new crew chief Nick Sandler who was the engineer on last season’s #99 team. Trevor Bayne moves up to the Cup series with the return of the #6 entry and crew chief Bob Osborne. Elliott Sadler and Darrell “Bubba” Wallace join the Roush-Fenway ranks in the XFinity series in the #1 and #6 cars respectively along with Chris Buescher and Ryan Reed who return to drive the #60 and #16 Fords.

Most of the changes in place for 2015 have occurred behind the scenes with the addition of Mark McArdle to oversee engineering and Kevin Kidd to supervise at-track operations with the Sprint Cup teams. McArdle comes to Roush-Fenway from Childress Racing and Kidd moves over from the Joe Gibbs Racing organization.

“As everyone knows, last year was certainly a tough season for us and this off-season and the no testing going on I feel has been a turning point because the down time gave us the opportunity to step back and look at where we made the wrong turn in the road at, “Biffle surmised, “We really feel like we found some things we have done wrong and righted that and we have a really great thing going now. In the shop, it’s amazing to see what’s going on and everybody is giving 110%. It’s people that win races and championships and the guys working in the shop right now are all pulling the string in the same direction and I think we are going to be really prepared for the beginning of the season and should be back in the game.”

“Typically there’s two ways to solve a problem and one is to find out what it isn’t and the other is to find out what the problem is, “Biffle continued, “Problem solving is very difficult and we recognized when there are single car teams running better than our cars were that we had a fundamental problem right from the very beginning. It wasn’t until we brought in some new blood so to speak and got a 10,000 foot view of what we were looking at to dissect the car all the way down to the chassis and the four tires to how we’re putting the body on the car and how that looks all the way up and what the underneath side of the car looks like. It wasn’t until we did that and found we’ve made a fundamental mistake on the way we put this whole thing together that out-tricked ourselves so to speak. We felt like we found what we had done wrong and the season was over. I say it was a good thing we didn’t have any testing because we would have been rushed to try things. We tried everything and it hadn’t fixed the problem so he hadn’t found the problem yet and all the way up to Homestead we hadn’t found the underlying issue we had with the cars. Going forward we feel like we have really discovered some Earth shattering things about our cars and what we had been doing wrong. We feel very strongly about what we have now.”

Bayne enters his first full season at the Cup level driving the #6 car and he feels while he has spent five years with the organization, the timing is right now to move to the next level.

“Now it seems like the timing is going to be good because Roush is on the upswing at the Cup level, “Bayne stated, “I feel like we are making a lot of good changes to make our cars fast again. Had I been in the car the last couple years like some of the other guys I might have been a bit frustrated like they were last year but I think now I’m going to catch that upswing a little bit.”

“For me it’s been trying to be patient and I’ve had to learn a lot of that, “Bayne continued reflecting on his wait to compete full time in the Sprint Cup Series,”I think 2011 probably aged me about ten years as far as what I went through that season but the last couple years have been more mellow and have been kind of in the middle without a lot of real highs or lows which taught me to handle that as well. Going into this season I feel more well rounded than I would have been in 2011.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. said he is ready for the season to begin and expects improvement on last season’s performance.

“We’re ready to get going and we’ve got some new changes on our team so the guys are working hard in the shop, “Stenhouse stated, “We have crew chief Nick Sandler coming over who was the engineer on the #99 team last year so he’s learned a lot from Jimmie Fennig and Mike Kelley is staying on board so with Nick and Mike working together with some leadership from Jimmie I’m looking forward to getting the season going.”

“I feel like I can do it and there’s really no lack of confidence in my ability to get the job done in the race car, “Stenhouse said, ”That’s what I’ve done ever since I grew up is performed in every race car that I’ve been in and I want the Cup car to be no different. We struggled when we first started in the Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series and bounced back to be very successful there and we plan on doing that in Cup. Obviously I wanted it the first year and if not the first year I thought I was going to get it in the second year but that didn’t work. But we’re going to keep plugging away and I do think our results will be better.”

“I really enjoyed the off-season this year. I spent countless days at the shop just being there hanging out and helping out where they let me help out. I enjoyed just being with the guys and had a lot of fun at the Chili Bowl and followed that up with a snowmobile trip with some buddies out to Montana,” Stenhouse continued describing his off track activities. “I’m really ready to kind of get back in the grind and get going for it. I think the shop and everybody on our team needed an off-season of working hard and then being able to go home and see their families at night. I think that has really helped re-energize everybody.”

Team Co-owner Jack Roush agreed with his driver’s assessments of the program heading into 2015 stating things were on the rise at the organization.

“The glass is definitely more than half full, “Roush stated, “We won races at a road course and a short track and were strong on the superspeedways. The hole in our performance was on the 1.5 mile and 2 mile race tracks which has typically been our strengths. As we looked at things we had to make sure whatever we did wouldn’t screw up the things we were strong at and I characterize our changes as tweaks rather than revolutionary changes.”

 

Share Button