The Fall of Roush/Fenway Racing
Just a few short seasons ago the Roush garage was the envy of many race teams in NASCAR. Now, this once dominate team is left with no car in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase. Are there any signs that there is a turnaround in its future? Not since June of 2013 at Michigan International Speedway has a Roush/Fenway car visited victory lane. For any team, that’s a long time. For a multi-car team with decent funding and talented drivers, that’s bizarre.
Greg Biffle, who won Roush’s last race in 2013 is an extremely talented driver. With Rickey Stenhouse Jr. and Trevor Bayne the Roush/Fenway team has a pretty neat blend of veteran and young drivers in which to build. But what has caused this slump and how does it get fixed?
The cars: Arguably the field this season have all been chasing the Toyota’s, mainly the Gibbs group along with Martin Truex Jr. The Toyota’s have taken the checkered flag 14 times this season. Chevrolet, has 8 and the Fords close by with 6. Those 4 Ford victories all come from the Penske Racing Team who are near the top of the field week after week. The Stewart-Haas team, with two cars in the 2016 Chase think so highly of the Ford’s that they are moving from Chevrolet to Ford starting in the 2017 season.
The Drivers: Just about any team would be happy to have a Greg Biffle driving one of its cars. Biffle’s won 19 races coming into this season and has earned over $75 million in his racing career. He didn’t all of a sudden forget how to drive. The kids? Rickey Stenhouse Jr. won 8 races in his short stint in the Xfinity Series and finished in the top 10 in nearly 60% of the time. Trevor Bayne has a Daytona 500 win on his resume and a fairly impressive Xfinity Series record of his own capturing 73 top 10’s in just 153 races. With the talented Chris Buescher seemingly waiting in the wings, the team has some good up and coming drivers in their camp.
Funding: In 2001 the team moved all of its racing teams into a single facility located in Concord, North Carolina. In 2009 the Roush team was ordered by NASCAR to shrink the number of teams from five to four. In 2011 the team further cut the teams down to three. Is there a trend here?
Leadership: Look, Jack Roush knows his stuff and far be it for me to guess about any of the internal issues that may be facing this team. Jack is 74 years old. In a tough environment like NASCAR, I’d imagine he feels every bit that age. In 2014 the organization hired retired racing star Mark Martin. Just one year later Martin decided to quit. His explanation? He didn’t want to attend races? Interesting to say the least.
Dave Pericak, the Ford Performance boss is optimistic that a return of good fortunes for Roush/Fenway is close. “I’ve been in the job for over a year and I’ve said we’ve been going to fix Roush.”
One thing I know. The Series was better off with a healthy and competitive Roush/Fenway Racing Team. With the Stewart Haas drivers moving to Ford next year one would expect the Fords to be in the thick of things for the Manufacturing Championship in the Sprint Cup Series in 2017. Will Mr. Biffle, Bayne and Stenhouse Jr. be a part in that? Let’s hope so.
Thanks for reading. Listen to WTBQ radio on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:45 as I join Frank, Taylor and the Morning Show gang to discuss all the current happenings in NASCAR. You can also follow me on twitter @JimLaplante
