FONTANA, Calif. -- Last November, after Matt Kenseth had missed the Chase for the first time in his career on NASCAR's premier series, car owner Jack Roush asked his driver if he was comfortable with the direction of his No. 17 team. Kenseth said yes, adding that he felt like crew chief Drew Blickensderfer needed a full season and a full offseason to turn the program around.

And then he got to Daytona, and realized he was wrong.

“

I hope I can continue on and get the No. 17 car back where it belongs, in Victory Lane.

”

-- TODD PARROTT

"You guys [in the media] say I don't show emotions sometimes? I kind of felt like the whole group was like that," Kenseth said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. "I just feel like we needed something to throw a spark in the thing, to get the guys back remembering what this is all about, how lucky we are to do this, racing at the top level. It takes a lot of work and enthusiasm and attitude and all those things to be successful, and I wasn't feeling that vibe."

That something turned out to be a rare post-Daytona 500 crew chief change, with Roush Fenway Racing effectively swapping Blickensderfer with Todd Parrott, the former championship crew chief who was overseeing the superspeedway program in Roush's research and development effort. The move was startling, in more ways than one -- it came on the heels of an eighth-place finish at Daytona, and one race into the season rather than during the winter. But Kenseth said he'd rather make the move now rather than regret any inaction later.

"It doesn't make any sense. It's not really good for anybody. It's just kind of the way it went down," Kenseth said. "I thought it was just something that needed to be done. We're just one race in, we've got a lot of racing to go this year, and we wanted to get Todd in there with the guys and get him acclimated and get a head start on this thing instead of waiting halfway into the season, and it's too late to dig ourselves out."

Blickensderfer has now experienced the extremes of the business in a span of just over 12 months. A year ago he was Kenseth's personal choice to succeed Chip Bolin atop the No. 17 pit box, and the driver's faith was rewarded with consecutive victories in the Daytona 500 and at Auto Club Speedway. Even after a run of mediocre efforts late last summer kept Kenseth out of the Chase for the first time, there was no public indication that Blickensderfer would be replaced.

There seemed to be no indication inside Roush Fenway, either, until Kenseth went to Daytona and picked up on a vibe he was uncomfortable with.

"You didn't feel like everybody came into the truck fired up to go win races. This probably wasn't the case, but you almost felt like they came in and they were just kind of going through the motions," he said. "We needed to get some spark into the group and get everybody back to what this is about. I'm a big football fan, so watching Drew Brees fire up all his guys before the game, and seeing Ray Lewis and this guys firing up the defense, and you see those guys ready to go out and do the best they can ... I'm not a very good leader, I'll admit that. I'm not a good leader, I'm not the guy to do that. I just felt like something needed to be changed, and that usually starts with the driver or the crew chief."

For the Roush team, it was clearly a painful decision.

"I'm really conflicted about what we're doing here," Roush said. "This is a performance business. We've all got to do what we've got to do, and we're out there on the firing line to meet the expectations of our fans and satisfy our sponsors and the other partners we've got, and we have to do the right human thing as well. That's where my point of conflict comes."

Roush specified that Blickensderfer was not fired, adding that he believes the former crew chief will once day be a factor in Sprint Cup with one of his teams. With the 17 crew, though, the chemistry wasn't right. Kenseth's team spent a decade under a strong, vocal leader in Robbie Reiser, who led the program to a championship in 2003 and departed after the 2007 campaign to oversee the Roush Fenway operation as general manager. Roush even toyed with the idea of returning Reiser to the No. 17 team, but ultimately decided that move would do more harm that good given the work the GM has done in improving the programs of Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards.

So in comes Parrott, himself a forceful personality, who won the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400, and the Cup championship in successful stint atop Dale Jarrett's pit box. "I hope I can continue on and get the No. 17 car back where it belongs, in Victory Lane," said Parrott, who has 28 victories as a crew chief, the most recent coming in 2005. He worked for Petty Enterprises and Hall of Fame Racing before joining Roush.

But it's his style that Kenseth and the No. 17 team seem to need most.

"It really wasn't a change that was about me and Drew, to be honest with you," Kenseth said. "We always talk about it being a team sport, but it really is. That's really where I found we needed some help was team-wise. They were used to an experienced, strong, leader like Robbie. When Todd first comes in here, his voice kind of thunders through the room. It's really hard to explain, but we were just missing something on the team. I didn't feel like with the way we operated at Daytona, we could win races and win championships. I didn't feel that way for whatever reason, and it just felt like a change needed to be made."

Added Roush: "[Parrott] brings great strength to the 17 team. He has the presence and the wherewithal and the experience to manage this band of pirates that Robbie Reiser has assembled over there. That may be too much for a young man. That may be too much for me."

Biffle said he's disappointed to see Parrott leave the R&D position. "That probably hurts me a little bit as far as Todd was a great asset in the position he was in with research and development and kind of floating between all the cars," he said. "He was really an asset and a really good value at that position, but I think he'll be very good with Matt. I think Todd has proven himself as a crew chief over and over, that he's smart and sharp, and I think it will be good for Matt."

The decision to make the change came in a meeting Tuesday, where Roush, Reiser, Kenseth, and engineering manager Chris Andrews all agreed that something needed to be done. Reiser will work with Parrott atop the No. 17 team's pit box on Sunday in what Roush called an "all hands on deck" effort. Then it's just a matter of hoping for results.

"It's not really a Drew thing or Drew and me not being able to work together well, because we really did," said Kenseth, who makes many of the personnel calls on the No. 17 team himself. "But it was just the whole dynamic of the team. We needed something to try and get the whole group elevated."