Roush teams ready for season to end

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- A year ago, things were looking up for Roush Fenway Racing.

Even though Jimmie Johnson won the fall race at Phoenix International Raceway, Carl Edwards had won eight races during the season and still had a chance to win the championship the next week at Homestead, Fla., trailing Johnson by 141 points.

Not far behind Edwards were teammates Greg Biffle (third) and Matt Kenseth (eighth).

Drivers David Ragan and Jamie McMurray, both of whom did not make the Chase, were performing well, too. Ragan was 13th in points and McMurray 16th.

Edwards went on to win the season finale at Homestead, but Johnson won his third straight championship. Yet the organization seemed primed to contend for a title in 2009.

And for two weeks this season, it looked like it would.

Kenseth opened the 2009 season with back-to-back wins in the Daytona 500 and the following week at Auto Club Speedway in California. But for the next 30 races, no Roush driver could find Victory Lane again until McMurray won Nov. 1 at Talladega, Ala.

"If winning bred winning, we'd have won plenty this year -- we were so good last season. It doesn't really work like that," said Edwards, who starts 25th in today's Checker 500. Martin Truex Jr. is on the pole.

Now a year later, one wonders where the mojo has gone.

None of the Roush drivers who qualified for the Chase has won a race this season, and none has been in serious contention for the championship.

There have been discussions of crew chief changes in the offseason and one team -- McMurray's -- will dissolve as Roush must cut its five-team organization to a NASCAR-mandated four in 2010.

So what went wrong? What must be done?

The options -- thanks to NASCAR's ban on testing on NASCAR-sanctioned tracks -- are somewhat limited. But Edwards believes there is a starting point.

"First of all you have to be fast enough to win. Otherwise, you can't really plan on winning," he said. "If you're fast enough to win, things have to go your way. If they go your way, you might win.

"But, so far this season we just haven't had a lot of races where we're fast enough to win. The difference between this season and last season is instead of one out of 10 races we're fast enough to win as we are this season, last season I felt it was like eight out of 10 races we were fast enough to win.

"So, we just have to be better."

Even performance sometimes is misleading.

Kenseth's early-season wins seemed to bode well for himself and his teammates, but until McMurray's win at Talladega, they were the highlight of the season for the organization.

"You guys probably all felt the same way I did: This is going to be great - you guys might not have thought of it that way, but, hey, Roush is going to be, this is our year," Edwards said of his thoughts at the start of the season.

"All of a sudden these other teams, a lot of them really picked up and figured out either A) what we were doing, or B) they figured out something new and they picked up and we were kind of left to scramble to get better."

Obviously, that leaves a lot of work in the offseason. What exactly does that entail?

Biffle, who hopes to break his winless streak next weekend at Homestead, thinks testing is the key.

"Partly, what we have been doing is looking around for race tracks where we can go test, where it's still open to test - like New Smyrna, Little Rock, things like that," he said. "I know North Wilkesboro is going to be back in business, to a degree.

"What we need to do is iron out these cars. Computer modeling, simulation, has come a long way. That helps. But you still need some track time."

Latest Comment View all comments

Images

Related Content

• Story:
  Hamlin criticizes Gordon
• Story:
  Busch fails to clinch title
• Story:
  By the numbers
• Story:
  Today's lineup