What's wrong at Roush house?

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Martin Truex Jr., in an Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, will start from the pole at Phoenix International Raceway.

But a year ago, when Jimmie Johnson, Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet were chasing down a third straight championship, things were looking up for Roush Fenway Racing's Fords.

Johnson won the fall race at Phoenix, but Carl Edwards had won eight races during the season and still had a chance – trailing Johnson by 141 points – to win the 2008 championship the following week at Homestead, Fla.

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

David Ragan and Jamie McMurray, also in potent Roush Fenway Fords, had missed the Chase field but were performing well. Ragan was 13th in points and McMurray 16th.

Edwards won the season finale at Homestead, but was unable to deny Johnson another championship. Still, the Roush organization appeared primed to contend for a title in 2009.

And for two weeks this season, it looked as if it would.

Kenseth opened the 2009 season with back-to-back wins in the Daytona 500 and at Fontana, Calif. But over the next 30 races, no Roush driver could find Victory Lane 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 Sunday’s Checker 500.

A year later, one wonders where the mojo went.

None of the Roush drivers in the Chase field has won this season or contended for the championship.

There have been discussions of crew chief changes in the offseason and one team – McMurray’s – will dissolve as Roush cuts from five teams to the NASCAR-mandated maximum of 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, but until McMurray’s win at Talladega, they were the season highlights 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, recalling his early season thoughts.

“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 season-long 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.”

Disclaimer