FORT WORTH, Texas — Everything’s coming up Milhaas.
Following a season that saw a manufacturer change, three total victories among its four drivers and only one driver finishing higher than 14th in the standings, it’d be hard for “The Simpsons” themselves to script a better start to the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season than what Stewart-Haas Racing has enjoyed thus far.
The organization already has landed in Victory Lane more times than last season, winning four of the season’s first six races. With a stacked front row of Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick set to lead the field to green in Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio) — with Clint Bowyer close behind in third — five out of seven is looking a Larry Davidian pretty, pretty good.
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Things are just clicking at the moment, and SHR appears to be in the best position as an organization it’s ever been in – no small claim given it has a pair of championships in less than a decade of existence.
Much of the increase in performance can be credited to a certain man … who hasn’t seen a race track all year.
“It’s hard to pinpoint one single reason (for the resurgence), but my ex-crew chief, Tony Gibson … for him to come off the road and be as involved as he is in building the cars for all four teams; calling the races, pushing cars through tech, I think he found his perfect role at SHR,” Busch said Friday. “He’ll say it’s about ‘the process’ but he has found some good people, rearranged them in different positions and created continuity between the four cars.”
Whatever Gibson is doing, it’s working.
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All four drivers – including new addition Aric Almirola, who came within half a lap of winning the 2018 Daytona 500 – are solidly in the top 11 in points, have paced the field and are competing for victories each week.
With Ford sporting the oldest body style of the three manufacturers (Chevrolet introduced the Camaro ZL1 for this season; Toyota debuted the new Camry last year), some thought the blue oval could slip behind the duo even further this season, the sixth for the Gen-6 Ford Fusion.
That couldn’t be further from the truth, as even Ford’s other flagship stable in Team Penske has seen a bump in performance over ’17.
“You had another manufacturer get another body in the off-season and I was a little nerved up about that, knowing that the Fords would be the last ones to that. It has been go-cat-go,” said Bowyer, who ended the longest losing streak of his career last week at Martinsville Speedway. “We have focused on everything we can control and worked hard in the offseason. Everybody has. Aero, chassis, we made gains in every area and that is what you have to do at this level of competition that we compete against week in and week out. You have to make gains almost weekly. Doug (Yates) and everybody over at (Roush) Yates (Engines) with that horsepower, those babies are screaming under the hood. It is a lot of fun to be in this equipment right now.”
Both Bowyer and Harvick lauded team owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas on Friday, citing the support, financial backing and long-term commitment to winning that both offer.
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The results are undeniable, and the lineup that SHR currently sports after a few years of driver shakeup and mixed-bag results should be one that can remain constant and continue to build for the rest of the decade, at least. Heck, they’ve even managed to ignite the career of a 34-year-old Almirola, who’d finished in the top 20 in points just three times and never higher than 16th. The veteran driver is now in the mix week-by-week at the front of the field.
The direction of the company is steadfastly on the shoulders of the co-owners, but it’s clear their vision trickles down to Gibson, to the drivers, to the shop employees – some of whom have been there since Stewart made the leap from Joe Gibbs Racing ahead of the 2009 season.
You can’t buy that kind of stability.
“I think (SHR is) probably more stable then when I walked in the door last year. I thought that last year, (too). You just don’t have turnover,” Bowyer said. “When you really think about that and look at the employees, they’re employees that wanted to go over there when it was established with Tony and they’re still there today. That speaks volumes of the ownership, leadership, management, all the way down to the drivers, partners on those cars. It really just feels like family.
“It’s easy to be an employee there. You want to be an employee there. When you go to the shop you enjoy the conversation. … A lot of the places I’ve been in, you talk to an engineer and they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about when you’re talking about a late dirt model. You talk about some equation and they might be interested. Even there, the engineers are like, ‘What are you running on the left rear? What are you running on the right front?’ It’s a bunch of racers all the way through from the engineering department to the engine shop. They’re racers.”
Racers that, right now, are setting the bar for the rest of the series — and clearing it handily.
