Before the first engine is fired and the first lap is run in a new NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, it’s customary for every organization represented on the Charlotte Motor Speedway NASCAR Media Tour to tout its chances and explain why the current year will be better than the last one.
In the case of Roush Fenway Racing, the optimistic tone appears to be more than mere lip service.
For one thing, there’s a brand new mix of drivers who actually like each other. With the departures of Matt Kenseth in 2013 and Carl Edwards this year, Greg Biffle is the remaining veteran on the Sprint Cup side, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. set to start his third year at NASCAR’s highest level and 2011 Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne about to embark on his first year of full-time Cup racing in the resurrected No. 6 Ford.
Elliott Sadler and Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. have migrated from Joe Gibbs Racing and Kyle Busch Motorsports, respectively, to expand an XFINITY Series program that already included young talents Chris Buescher and Ryan Reed.
“We had a photo shoot (Tuesday), and all the drivers were getting along and hanging out, and that’s part of it,” Stenhouse said Wednesday at the Charlotte Convention Center. “I don’t know if Roush has ever had all the drivers get along and hang out and have fun.
“I think (Owner) Jack (Roush) is enjoying it, too.”
On the performance side, RFR took a hard look at its underwhelming results on the 1.5- and 2-mile speedways — historically a strength of the company — and changed directions. Though NASCAR’s ban on discretionary testing precluded Roush from taking new ideas to the race track, Biffle said that might have been a blessing in disguise.
“I will tell you that this offseason and the no testing that has gone on,” Biffle said, “we have really kind of agonized over things, but I really feel like it has been a turning point for Roush Fenway because it has given us the down time and opportunities to step back and look at potentially where we had made the wrong turn in the road at. We have some new people in, and when you are racing every week and trying to do this and testing and over at Nashville and doing all these things, you are looking at the problem down low.
“It wasn’t until we got up higher and really looked at the landscape we decided we made some wrong decisions back possibly over a year ago on the direction with our cars. We really feel like we have found some things we have done wrong. We feel we have righted those things. Sometimes you have to pick a road and path and go down that, and we did. I feel like we have a great thing going and a bunch of excitement.”
To help establish a new direction, RFR hired outside the company, something the organization often has been loath to do in the past. Mark McArdle comes to RFR from Richard Childress Racing to oversee engineering. Kevin Kidd moves from JGR to take the role of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team manager, and Crew Chief Phil Gould, formerly of RCR, is reunited with Sadler in the XFINITY Series.
“I think Roush Fenway has kind of been the same for a long time,” Stenhouse said. “When you’re promoting from within all the time, the guys that you’re promoting are learning from the guys ahead of ‘em, and I think everything kind of stays the same. So I think, at some point, it just kind of gets stale…
“With Kevin Kidd coming over from Gibbs and Mark McArdle from RCR, I think they’ve brought a lot of great ideas, but really just a lot of structure. I think that’s what we were kind of missing at Roush Fenway, a good structure… I think Mark’s really set up a great plan and organization. The way he runs things, I think a lot of people really look up to him at our shop and really appreciate the effort him and Kevin have put in in a short amount of time.”
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