Posted on by Zack Albert

Talks expanding Truck team, family before attending Atlanta Hawks game

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The spare time of the NASCAR offseason comes as a welcome development for most drivers, but perhaps none so much as Kyle Busch. His namesake team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series is expanding from two trucks to three, and he and his wife, Samantha, are busy preparing for the arrival of their first child in May.
 
Besides getting ready for his driving duties in all three NASCAR national series, spare time has been a precious commodity for the father-to-be, proving that it pays to have a plan.

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The 29-year-old driver spoke openly Wednesday about the latest preparations for both the season and for Baby Busch, just hours before he watched the Atlanta Hawks — the NBA’s hottest team — post their 20th victory in their last 21 games in a promotional appearance for the NASCAR season-opening Daytona 500 (Feb. 22, 1 p.m. ET, FOX). The process so far has included ordering furniture, some construction and a heavy dose of anticipation for the couple’s first child.
 
But should Busch get a call on race day that would potentially take him from the garage to the delivery room, would he sit out of his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota? Would the new format for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs permit an exception for missing a points-paying race? That preparation is underway, too, if only in the early stages, but the Busches may benefit from some fortuitous timing that will have them all close to home.
 
"Actually, it hasn’t really been discussed with anyone at JGR yet," Busch said. "Samantha and I, we’ve discussed it a little bit. We feel like we’ve got a good game plan for a backup driver — it hasn’t been discussed yet, so I won’t reveal that name. I’ve got to get that cleared so I don’t want to make any assumptions and get somebody too excited before it happens. It has been discussed but fortunately the real cool part about it is, her due date is the Friday of the (NASCAR Sprint) All-Star Race, so if the baby comes a little early, I’ll be there in Charlotte for that week. If it comes a little later, I’ll be there for Charlotte week."
 
Busch got a jump on the racing side of offseason prep on Tuesday at Charlotte Motor Speedway during a test session with his truck team’s newcomers — Justin Boston, Daniel Suarez and Matt Tifft. Boston is scheduled for a full season in Kyle Busch Motorsports’ No. 54 Toyota, with Busch (four races), Suarez (13) and Tifft (six) splitting time in the No. 51. Erik Jones — like Suarez, a product of the NASCAR Next program — returns to KBM to drive a third truck, No. 4, in his first full-time effort in 2015.
 
Tifft has just three Camping World Truck Series starts in his brief career, and Boston and Suarez have competed in just one race each. Busch won’t be defending his season-opening truck win last year, but according to a KBM team rep, all three newbies are scheduled to drive in the NextEra Energy Resources 250 (Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1) at Daytona International Speedway, with Suarez behind the wheel of the No. 51 and Tifft driving for another Toyota team.
 
While the expansion of their driving duties — including diving head-first into Daytona — marks a big step in their progression up the NASCAR ladder, it’s not a leap that makes Busch worry.
 
"I don’t have any concerns at all," Busch said. "I think there is going to be a little bit of a learning experience, no doubt. I think there always is with young drivers, which to me, is not a problem. We had a little bit of that with Darrell Wallace his first year, and then his second year, we felt like he’d be ready to go and rock and roll, but just some bad luck and circumstances got him behind early, but then at the end of the year, he was the man to beat. Actually had a chance to win the championship if it hadn’t been for an engine failure at Texas. All’s good there. They’re all going to be ready for Daytona."
 
Busch has dialed back his participation in the Truck Series from 10 races last season and 11 the year before, but said the function of the reduced schedule was in large part because of the interest and funding that Tifft brought to the team for his six-race deal.
 
He’ll still be racing as much as ever in NASCAR’s other two national series, but said the side benefits of the time off from the truck circuit could help him focus on Sprint Cup competition and create more family time.
 
"It’s definitely an added bonus, I wouldn’t disagree with that, that I’m able to spend more time with the Cup stuff," Busch said, "but I’m still running just as many XFINITY races — 25 — with the Monster Energy Camry. And then of course, with the baby due in May, that’s exciting as well, too. I’m sure Samantha is going to want my time just as much as ever, which is fine, and we’re both excited for it."
 
In the meantime, Busch has helped draw attention to the dawn of a new season with the Daytona 500, appearing with the race’s Harley J. Earl Trophy in Atlanta and sitting in with Hawks’ legend Dominique Wilkins — the "Human Highlight Film" — for some basketball play-by-play. Wilkins, 55, is still making highlights, appearing — by way of some heavy photo editing for the game broadcast — in an M&Ms firesuit.

Posted on by Zack Albert

Furniture Row Racing looks to benefit from West Coast trifecta

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This year’s shift within the early part of NASCAR calendar, including the advent of a three-race West Coast swing, will save some teams the extra effort of crisscrossing the nation. For one organization in particular, the benefit is even greater.
 
Furniture Row Racing, the only full-time Sprint Cup Series team based west of the Mississippi River, aims to take every advantage from the schedule change that it can. The Denver, Colorado operation — located more than 1,500 miles from the industry’s Charlotte, North Carolina hub — enters its 10th year in NASCAR and its second season with driver Martin Truex Jr., bent on improving its 24th-place rank in the final 2014 standings.

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With a 36-race slate spread around the United States, travel is a necessary price to pay. Now, however, the schedule follows a more logical progression, scrapping the former Daytona-Phoenix-Las Vegas-Bristol-California turn for a cleaner Daytona-Atlanta-Las Vegas-Phoenix-California quintet that runs three events in Western states on consecutive weekends.
 
"It’s definitely a good change, I think, having all three West Coast races back to back," Truex said. "That Phoenix, California, Bristol … whatever it was, it was a nightmare for everyone traveling. Logistics, haulers back and forth across the country, switching out cars — it was definitely a good change, I think. For us to be out there for a week, have some fun, do some things and cut down on travel costs, it’s a good thing for everyone."
 
Furniture Row general manager Joe Garone, a former director of NASCAR’s Research & Development Center, said the team will continue to rely on the symbiotic relationship with the company that car owner Barney Visser founded in the Rockies in 1972. Garone said a furniture truck travels each week to North Carolina for deliveries, but that its other purpose is to exchange racing parts to bring back to Colorado.
 
Garone said the schedule alteration should help the team early on, but that the calendar always seems to balance itself out.
 
"Obviously, any time we’re racing out West, it’s a better situation," Garone said. "It’s harder on the East Coast guys and easier for us, but we get payback when we go back East."
 
For Truex, the truer test of the opening five- or six-race sequence has less to do with logistics and more to do with performance, especially for a single-car team that went from qualifying for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs in 2013 to leading just one lap all of last season.
 
Once Furniture Row makes the turn from winter to spring, Truex says the No. 78 Chevrolet team will have an indication of how well he has meshed with new crew chief Cole Pearn and whether the organization is ahead of the game concerning the new 2015 rules package. Truex hopes the results from that litmus test turn out to be bellwethers worth waiting for.
 
"The first five races or so — you have Daytona, a speedway track, a couple downforce races and a short track — you pretty much know where you stand five or six races in," Truex said. "Everybody will have a good idea of where they’re at and what they need to be working on. It’s always a fun part of the year when guys are developing new things, and you’re always optimistic that your team is one of the ones that’s going to get on the new stuff quick before everybody else and have an advantage for a while.
 
"Looking forward to it. I think that we’ve got a great group of guys put together, and again, with what we’ve built on last year and the new rules really fitting into our wheelhouse a little bit better, I think there’s a great opportunity for some success for us early in the season, and I hope we can take advantage of that."

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Teams discuss the pros and cons of new rule regarding lug nuts

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Now that NASCAR officials are no longer going across the wall, will Sprint Cup Series teams play fast and loose when they change tires during pit stops in 2015?
 
Will hitting all five lug nuts on each wheel continue to be the norm, since tire changers have practiced doing exactly that throughout their careers?
 
Or will hitting only three or four in an attempt to speed up the stop become more commonplace, particularly late in the race when only a few laps remain?

RELATED: NASCAR bulletin details 2015 pit road updates
 
"Everybody says, well maybe they’re going to just hit three lug nuts now," said Rodney Childers, crew chief for 2014 Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick. "The problem is that when you hit three, probably only two of them are going to be tight and that’s not going to be good enough.
 
"There are just so many things that can go wrong."

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Experience has taught him as much. His Stewart-Haas Racing team won last year’s title, but a variety of issues early in the season may have kept Harvick and the group from visiting the winner’s circle more often.
 
Wheel-related issues surfaced on more than one occasion with the No. 4 team.
 
"We learned a valuable lesson," he said. "If you do leave a lug nut just hanging on the stud, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to sling off the stud and then the glue will hang onto it for about five laps, the lug nut will end up inside the wheel and then it’s going to knock a valve stem off and you’re going to give away a race. That’s the kind of thing you’ve got to worry about and be careful with."
 
A loose wheel on a car "shows up on the stopwatch" on the track, said Jason Ratcliff, crew chief for 2003 champion Matt Kenseth, and depending on how many laps remain, could result in the driver having to return to the pits to correct the problem, erasing any track position gained from the move.
 
"When you weigh that out, it could be good," Ratcliff said. "The risk is going to be really high. Would I make the call? It depends on where I’m running, what I have to gain."
 
There’s also the potential for a P3 penalty from NASCAR if a wheel should come off and officials determine the failure was the result of a wheel not being properly attached.
 
P3 level penalties consist of a maximum $50,000 fine and/or a 15-point penalty in the driver and owner standings and/or crew chief suspension.
 
That would be the extreme, however, according to Drew Blickensderfer, a former tire changer that serves as crew chief for Sam Hornish Jr. at Richard Petty Motorsports.
 
"If you look back at how many wheels have fallen off cars because of loose lug nuts, it’s very small," Blickensderfer said. "To get one to fall off, it has to be a major mistake. Hitting three … is probably not going to make the wheel fall off; the driver is going to think the vibration is so bad he’s going to catch it before it falls off.
 
"I think you’ll see drivers complaining of vibrations and then it’s up to them how brave they want to be, whether they come to pit road or not."

MORE: Crew chiefs expect more penalties in 2015
 
The potential to win the race off pit road, or greatly improve one’s track position is difficult to ignore, especially if teams see others roll the dice and reap the rewards.
 
Crew chiefs often have to make crucial calls during the course of a race. Now, they have one more area to consider.
 
"It’s no different than the stay out, two-tire or four-tire call that’s a creative call at times but can win a race," Todd Gordon, crew chief for Joey Logano, said. "I think there will be other opportunities for that with pit stops now."
 
Gordon wouldn’t say if he’d instruct his tire changers to hit fewer than five lug nuts, but noted, "We are always aware of what our opportunities are to speed up anything on pit road.
 
"It’s a performance business and we’re trying to beat people, so you have to take every avenue you can to be more competitive."
 
"Really, let’s be honest, it probably goes on now," said Alan Gustafson, crew chief for Jeff Gordon. "It’s really tough for them to police … to 100 percent accuracy. Maybe they were at best 50-60 percent accurate, so it’s going to be very similar to now."
 
Where the race is being held will have an impact on the decision-making process. The force on a wheel is greater, for example, on the faster intermediate tracks than the shorter venues such as Richmond and Martinsville.
 
"Now, if you drop a lug nut at Daytona on the right rear you won’t even think twice about going back and putting it on," Blickensderfer said. "Before, you would take the time to put it on, have a 19-second stop that would kill you. Now you leave it, keep going and hope the driver doesn’t say there’s a vibration.
 
"I think when you go to Martinsville, you’re going to know ‘Hey, we’re going to try to get them all tight; if something happens we’re OK with that.’ … You go to Atlanta, that right front better be tight or you’re in trouble. It’s fairly self policing there."
 
Altering how a tire changer does his job could actually slow down the process.
 
"If you’ve got a guy that’s very precise and is very good at that, and you ask him to change that, you may not be doing yourself any favors," Ratcliff said. "Just speaking as a former tire changer, and knowing how your typical athlete behaves, the reason they practice is so they can perform the way they practice — it’s just a dress rehearsal."
 
But, he added, "You can bet your bottom dollar some guys are going to try it early on and see what they can get out of it."

MORE: New pit road technology at the ‘tip of the spear’

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JTG owner Daugherty finds humor in Allmendinger’s road course pressure

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A lot of NASCAR is about proving you have what it takes to run with the elite. Drivers can spend an entire career in search of that one win to validate their spot in the Sprint Cup Series garage.

That’s exactly what it felt like for AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet, leading up to his first win of his Cup career at Watkins Glen International last season.

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"You can run up front, but if you don’t have that win, you’re just looked at differently," Allmedinger said at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom. "All it takes is that one win to get in and your name is no longer talked about.

"But just to get a win, and really our base group has stayed the same, so we’re a family. We’ve won a race together now. You can’t it away and it just gives us confidence to go want to win more and I think we can, it’s just going to take a lot of work. We’ve gotten better in the offseason, as I’m sure everybody has said. We’ll see once we unload at Daytona and really unload at Atlanta and the season really kicks off, but I feel good about what we’ve done."

RELATED: Allmendinger learns spotter news the hard way

While the JTG Daugherty team may have made improvements in the offseason, it was announced on Monday that they won’t be able to demonstrate their progress at the Sprint Unlimited race at Daytona International Speedway.

"In mid-December NASCAR changed the rules regarding Sprint Unlimited eligibility," JTG Daugherty Racing team owner Tad Geschickter said in a statement released by the team.

"We were not qualified for that race until NASCAR’s decision to expand the field stating all 16 drivers who qualified for the Chase were eligible. We had already budgeted for our 36 points paying races. There was not ample time for us to secure additional sponsorship and prepare for the race without compromising our Daytona 500 preparation."

Moving forward, it’s no longer about securing that first win, but maintaining and continuing success into the new season.

"I think for year two (of the new Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format), we still expect to win and get in," No. 47 crew chief Brian Burns said. "We’d like to say that running consistent all year long — let’s say something bad happened at the Glen or a track where we were expected to win — I’d like to say we made it in on points as well, to be a consistent team like that.

"To get into the Chase is great; to compete and run well in the Chase is another step that we’re working on getting towards and that’s just being consistent everywhere we go. We don’t just want to show up and have people talk about us at Watkins Glen, saying this is the team to beat. We want to go to every track and say this is a team that could win at every track we show up at, and that’s our goal."

Allmendinger’s win at Watkins Glen in August last year put the one-car team into the Chase field for the first time in the organization’s short history and from there it was a learning experience for the new title contenders.

"What we’ve learned is that we’re not as good as we thought we were," Daugherty said. "We captured thunder on a weekend in Watkins Glen and got a little bit ahead of ourselves and then got our butts kicked a lot from there forward. So we’ve got to, no matter what happens, we’ve got to bounce back every weekend regardless."

While making the Chase can create daunting pressure for drivers throughout the season, continuing to cultivate road course success is another heavy load to carry. But Daugherty explains that he feels stress-free when it comes to racing on a road course.

"I never feel any pressure, and that’s too bad because I know AJ is drinking Pepto-Bismol," Daugherty joked. "I love it, I think we’re gonna kick everybody’s behind. I tell everybody … I go through the garage, I tell Jimmie Johnson, I tell (Clint) Bowyer, and I tell Jeff Gordon, I tell all of them, ‘We’re gonna kick your butt.’

"The week before we went to Watkins Glen I went down the line to every man … I told Jimmie, I told Jamie McMurray, I told Clint, ‘We’re going to wax your behind at Watkins Glen.’ Now AJ was not really happy with me for doing that, but I don’t have to drive a race car, all I do is talk. So I don’t feel any pressure."

For Allmendinger, he knows that 2015 is about carrying the confidence he found last year into every race of the upcoming season.

"There’s no more pressure than what I put on myself," Allmendinger said. "I expected to go out there — whether it be Sonoma or Watkins Glen — and be one of the cars to beat. Now that we’ve got a victory (at Watkins Glen) it feels no different to go there and still be one of the cars to beat. I’ve got confidence in myself, no matter what type of race track that I’m on. It’s just fun now to be able to go back to a race and be the defending champion and to finally have that in my Sprint Cup career."

Posted on by Staff Report

Multiple over-the-wall changes for No. 88 team

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It’s a year of change for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

In addition to the primary sponsor change — Nationwide Insurance — and new crew chief with Greg Ives, fans will see different pit crew members going over the wall for Dale Jr. in 2015.

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Nevertheless, the No. 88 crew is keeping the changes within the Hendrick Motorsports family.

Former No. 88 fueler Dustin Lineback returns to his old ride in 2015, filling the vacant front tire carrier position. He’ll be carrying tires for front tire changer David Mayo, who has pitted with both the No. 48 and 88 teams in the past.

Longtime rear tire changer Joe Slingerland returns to his familiar post for 2015. He’ll be aided by rear tire carrier William "Rowdy" Harrell, who served as a No. 48/88 backup in 2014.

Current fueler Matt Tyrrell will remain with the No. 88 team this season, as well as jackman Nick Covey.

These pit crew members will receive their first test of the season when they travel down to Daytona International Speedway for the annual Speedweeks, which culminates with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 22 (1 p.m. ET, FOX).

Posted on by Staff Report

Likes group qualifying overall, just not at restrictor-plate tracks

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Tony Stewart expressed his distaste for group qualifying at restrictor-plate tracks during a live interview with Sirius XM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday night that was also attended by Stewart-Haas Racing teammate and 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick.

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"To be perfectly honest, I am not a big fan of that," Stewart said when told Daytona 500 qualifying (1:30 p.m. ET, Feb. 15, FOX) would include a group element to determine the front row for the Great American Race (1 p.m. ET, Feb. 22 on FOX).

RELATED: How Daytona 500 qualifying works

"It’s exciting to watch, but the thing that most don’t realize is that, first of all, you’re trying to be the last guy to come out," Stewart said. "Once those guys in the back get that run and make that first lap, the last thing they want to do is go ahead and run that next lap full throttle and give the guys they just passed the same opportunity.

"So what you have is guys dumping out of the throttle and closing rates that are not good at all. You can’t hardly see through the guy in front of you. If somebody does something three or four cars up there and your spotter can’t tell you about, it has a lot of potential to be, you know, bad."

Harvick, who won a career-high eight Coors Light Pole Awards last season, chimed in with his agreement.

"It’s tough to make it work at Daytona and Talladega," Harvick said of group qualifying. "The format is unbelievable at all the other race tracks, but I’m with him."

Stewart closed by suggesting to NASCAR that future tweaks to the system might be needed.

"It’s qualifying," Stewart said. "We have enough trouble wrecking cars at restrictor-plate tracks as it is. I do like the idea that it’s traditional as far as locking in the front row. I think that is something that is important. I think there’s ways that maybe in the future NASCAR could do it a little different.

"I think all in all the whole qualifying format for the year was awesome. I thought that was one of the best changes and one of the easiest changes NASCAR had to make. It was a really, really good decision on their part. It brings a lot of excitement on Friday; I’m just not crazy about it at Daytona and Talladega."

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Cup driver to pilot No. 92 in NCWTS at Daytona

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Ricky Benton Racing announced Wednesday that David Gilliland will drive the team’s No. 92 Ford in the season-opening NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.

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Gilliland, entering his 10th year as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular, is scheduled to make only his fourth start in the Truck Series in the NextEra Energy Resources 250 (Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1) at Daytona International Speedway.
 
"I want to win races," Gilliland said in a release provided by the team, "And this crew, the engine package and what Ricky has put together can win. I want to be a part of it."
 
Gilliland, who re-signed Jan. 13 with the Front Row Motorsports No. 38 Ford team on the Sprint Cup tour, said maintaining his affiliation to a Ford team in the Truck Series was important. He added that his future with the Benton-owned team, which has participated on a part-time basis the last five seasons, wasn’t set in stone beyond Daytona.
 
"I’m not ruling anything out," Gilliland said. "We are going to run Daytona and see how it goes from there."
 
RBR — based in Cerro Gordo, North Carolina — will continue with Mike Hester as crew chief for the No. 92. Roush Yates Racing Engines will remain the team’s engine supplier. Sponsorship will come from BTS Tire and Wheel Distributors, Goodyear FleetHQ, Wynn’s and Tim Cooksey Oil Company.
 
The team used a rotation of drivers in 2014, with four drivers competing in two races each — Ross Chastain, NASCAR Next’s Austin Hill, Corey LaJoie and Scott Riggs. LaJoie notched the team’s best finish — a 10th place in August at Bristol Motor Speedway.

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BitPay to be featured on the No. 54 for Justin Boston

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Kyle Busch Motorsports announced Wednesday that BitPay will provide primary sponsorship for its No. 54 Toyota and rookie Justin Boston in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season opener.

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The digital currency company joins forces in time for the curtain-raising NextEra Energy Resources 250 (Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1) at Daytona International Speedway. The KBM team prevailed in last year’s opener, with owner/driver Kyle Busch taking the checkered flag.
 
Boston, a Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate, is scheduled to make his second career start in the series at Daytona. He drove a Bill Venturini-owned truck to a 30th-place finish in August at Bristol Motor Speedway, exiting early after a crash.
 
The 25-year-old Maryland native also entered two races last season for Joe Gibbs Racing in what is now known as the NASCAR XFINITY Series. Boston finished ninth in his XFINITY debut on Sept. 20 at Kentucky Speedway, then wound up 12th in the No. 20 Toyota the following week at Dover International Speedway.
 
Boston is one of a handful of new faces behind the wheel at KBM for 2015. He’ll join Erik Jones, Daniel Suarez, Matt Tifft and his truck owner among the team’s stable of drivers.

Posted on by Zack Albert

Organization hopes to boost program that struggled in 2014

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After last season’s bottoming-out, Roush Fenway Racing headed into the offseason needing an injection — of performance, new attitudes and fresh faces. Definitive changes have transformed the latter two, and the team’s hope is that the former will follow suit.
 
Roush Fenway didn’t use name tags for its refreshed roster during last week’s presentation at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom, but it may as well have. New drivers in both the NASCAR Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series have joined the mix, and new engineers are bent on deconstructing the team’s shortcomings and closing its technology deficit.
 
If first impressions mean anything, the team’s first media session with a new core in the competition department showed a loose, enthused group aiming to climb from the performance valley of 2014.

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"I think Roush Fenway has kind of been the same for a long time," said Ricky Stenhouse Jr., a Roush mainstay since 2009, now entering his third NASCAR Sprint Cup season, "and when you’re promoting from within all the time, the guys that you’re promoting kind of learn from the guys ahead of them, everything kind of stays the same. At some point, it just kind of gets stale. With the new faces, we kind of went all-in."
 
On the driving side, the personnel may be new to Roush Fenway but are familiar to most in the NASCAR crowd. Longtime Ford driver Trevor Bayne makes the jump to a full-time Sprint Cup ride in Roush’s hallowed No. 6, and former truck standout Darrell Wallace Jr. joins veteran Elliott Sadler to round out the team’s new look on the XFINITY circuit.
 
But some of the most important changes have taken place behind the scenes, with two key hirings last November. Mark McArdle has joined the Roush Fenway fold as its engineering director on the Sprint Cup and XFINITY side after a successful stint at Richard Childress Racing. Kevin Kidd signs on as the Sprint Cup Series team manager in charge of at-track operations, moving over from Joe Gibbs Racing.

RELATED: Roush makes competition additions
 
The new dynamic, plus a freshening of the team shop, has already helped the team break some of its old patterns.
 
"Problem-solving is very, very difficult," said Greg Biffle, Roush Fenway’s longest-tenured driver. "We recognized when there are single-car teams running better than our cars were that we had a fundamental problem right from the very beginning. It wasn’t until we brought in some new blood and got a 10,000-foot view of what we’re looking at, and kind of dissected the car all the way down to the chassis."
 
Robbie Reiser remains in place as the team’s general manager, a position he accepted at the end of the 2007 season after a long-running career as a championship-winning crew chief. The additions of McArdle and Kidd help bolster the team’s engineering staff, a luxury that Biffle said Reiser didn’t always have.
 
"We gave him a crescent wrench and a hammer, and he didn’t have the right tools," Biffle said. "When we put him in charge of Roush Fenway competition, we were a couple years late as a team, as an organization, maybe three, four, five years late in doing that. So we put him in that position; instantly, our performance went up. We ran better, we made challenges at the title — Carl tied in points with Tony (Stewart, in 2011) — but we never gave him any more support. It was Robbie on an island, and he had to do it all. We needed to provide more stability for that. As other teams grew, we kind of stayed in that position."
 
The overhaul hasn’t been limited to technology; changes have also given team chemistry — often a finicky quality to balance — a significant boost. Jamie McMurray, who drove for Roush from 2006 to 2009 before returning to team owner Chip Ganassi, said he knew the potential pitfalls first-hand during his time there.
 
"The dynamic at Roush was definitely different, and I think it’s different now. It’s changed," McMurray said last week. "I don’t want to put words in anyone else’s mouth that’s driven there, but most guys that drove for Roush and then left couldn’t believe how much different the environment was at a different organization. I was here initially and went to Roush, and I was like I couldn’t believe how good I had it at Ganassi, just the vibe throughout the shop and the way you were treated. …
 
"First off, Jack’s mellowed out a lot in the past five years. Jack would take, you’d have the team meetings on Tuesday and you would go in and sit at this long conference table — all the crew chiefs and all the drivers — and I swear Jack got a kick out of just humiliating you in front of everybody. As you would be the guy being humiliated, you would look around at other teammates and you could tell they were like, ‘Sorry you’re having to go through it,’ right?
 
"I don’t think it’s that way any more, and I think that got Jack a long way at times treating people that way. I wasn’t motivated by being humiliated. I was more motivated by a guy like Chip, wrapping his arm around me like, ‘We’re going to get through this. Hang with me.’ Just way different environment than what I have now."
 
The team has dealt more recently with the departures of Matt Kenseth after the 2012 season and Carl Edwards this offseason. The exodus appears to be stemmed: Biffle recommitted to Roush Fenway after declining offers from other teams, keeping one of its keystone drivers in place.

MORE: Biffle looks to lead Roush reversal
 
To hear Biffle and the rest of Roush’s current drivers tell it, the rise in confidence is already palpable.
 
"As far as the shop, making it nicer and bringing in the new faces, I think it kind of re-energizes everything, but it transfers down," Stenhouse said. "I guess it would start with the drivers, being in shop, hanging out with the guys. When they feel the confidence that I have in what they’re doing and what our organization is doing, a lot of the workers in our shop feed off of that. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t set a bad example. You want them to follow what you’re feeling and what you’re doing. We’ve got a lot of energized drivers.
 
"We had a photo shoot yesterday and all the drivers are getting along, hanging out, and I think that’s part of it. I don’t know if Roush has ever had all the drivers get along and hang out and have fun. I think Jack’s enjoying it as well."

Posted on by Nascar

Ford Technical Support Center takes on bigger role with limited testing

Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company

Play: NASCAR Fantasy Live

Most NASCAR drivers spent the bulk of last week’s Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom seated in front of a microphone fielding questions from the media.
 
Chris Buescher spent his turning laps at Dover International Speedway.
 
The 22-year-old wasn’t ignoring NASCAR’s limited testing policy for 2015. Instead, the Roush Fenway Racing driver completed nearly an entire race in Ford Racing’s full motion platform simulator during the media tour’s stop at the Ford Technical Support Center in Concord, North Carolina.
 
"Very close to 200 laps, very close," the NASCAR XFINITY Series driver said.

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The simulator is the centerpiece of the 33,000-square-foot technology center and is realistic enough that some folks have become ill after sliding behind the wheel.
 
"We put Robbie Reiser (RFR vice president of competition) in the SIM early on and I don’t think he took it too well," Buescher said. "There are people that have gotten sick. It’s a different motion, a lot of movement. The screen is constantly moving. Especially if you wreck, when you get into that position it gets a little crazy."
 
But it’s a bit more than fun and games. For teams, the highly advanced piece is the next best thing to turning laps on an actual track, and can be used to assess setups for each of the tracks on the NASCAR schedule — from superspeedways to short tracks, road courses to intermediates. For drivers, it’s also an opportunity to log laps and become familiar with the nuances of each venue. It’s also one place where weather is never an issue.
 
With NASCAR limiting testing for the 2015 season, such opportunities are more crucial than ever.
 
"The biggest help for me is just more seat time," Buescher said. "Last year before Watkins Glen … myself, (teammates) Trevor (Bayne) and Ryan (Reed), were able to get on the simulator and run some laps leading up to the road races. And that’s one of the places that I think it works the best, at this moment."
 
It should be noted that Buescher went on to win the XFINITY Series race a short time later at Mid-Ohio for his first career victory.
 
Officials said nearly every track would eventually be programmed into the system.
 
"I think that the ovals will come along … we’re making huge steps in that area but it’s still rather new technology," Buescher said. "… I think they were saying that the F1 teams, once they came out with this technology, it took them three to four years to really get it to where it was perfect. … Now that the technology has come so far, we expect our learning curve to be quicker than that. But still, certainly there’s a way to go."
 
Other tools available to all Ford teams at the center, which has been operational for less than one year, include three additional "rigs" used to fine-tune, test and measure specific areas of a race car.
 
The center also boasts a small theater where engineers from Ford as well as the Ford teams can gather to watch practice, qualifying and races with feeds that include live timing and scoring and the ability to sort and retrieve data almost instantly.
 
"Our plan is to use this facility for more than just NASCAR development," said Raj Nair, Ford Group vice president for global product development. "We want to make the tools and resources available to our teams across many of the racing series we compete in."
 
As for Buescher, win No. 2 can’t come soon enough.
 
"Absolutely," he said. "Getting that first one out of the way was huge for us. Now we are just looking forward to 2015 and adding on to that list. We need to get the second and third one and so on.
 
"I think with our XFINITY Series lineup we have here we should be competing for a championship this year. … Everyone in the shop has been working extremely hard and everyone is ready to get back to racing."
 
The simulator may be incredibly realistic and a tremendous learning tool, he said, but knocking off a few hundred laps here or there "isn’t enough practice through the offseason.
 
"We are ready to get to Daytona."