Roush Fenway Racing revamped, ready for fresh start

CONCORD, N.C. -- High level of dissatisfaction. Rough two years. Being irrelevant. Tough season.

Those terms go a long way toward describing the downturn at Roush Fenway Racing, once a Sprint Cup powerhouse but now an operation struggling to right the ship. The important thing for RFR is that those evaluations come not from outside observers but from RFR executives and drivers.

Rather than denying its issues and pressing stubbornly ahead without changes, Roush Fenway has acknowledged its deficiencies and is approaching the 2015 season with a fresh start -- and with fresh people.

Key among them is engineering director Mark McArdle, an auto racing veteran with a resume that includes success in both IndyCar and stock car racing. Team owner Jack Roush hired McArdle in November to examine, analyze and -- ultimately -- fix the problems at RFR, which now rides in the very long shadow of Team Penske, clearly the sport's dominant Ford operation.

Over the past five seasons, RFR won 18 Sprint Cup races. In the same time period, Penske totaled 25 wins, and Chevrolet dynamo Hendrick Motorsports won 43.

Roush Fenway won only two races last season, and those wins were scored by Carl Edwards, who left the team at the end of the year to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing. Driving for RFR this year are veteran Greg Biffle, who had only three top fives last year, slow-to-rise Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who finished in the top five only once last year and failed to lead a lap through the 36-race schedule, and Trevor Bayne, launching his first full Sprint Cup season after a relatively mediocre Xfinity Series run.

At first glance, the RFR driver corps doesn't match up with the sport's other powerhouse teams, but the conventional wisdom in the sport is that Roush's problems are not behind the wheel but in the often complex engineering niceties that make one car better than another.

"If you had walked through the halls of Roush Fenway during the latter part of last season, there would have been a high level of dissatisfaction," said RFR president Steve Newmark. "We set goals for ourselves and didn't meet them. We spent a lot of time in the off-season doing some soul-searching to figure out what we need to do to get back on top. I think we realize that sports are cyclical and teams go up and down, but you don't get back to the top just by waiting for inertia to take you there."

Roush hired McArdle and former Joe Gibbs Racing crew chief Kevin Kidd, who will oversee RFR's Sprint Cup operations at speedway sites.

Finding the right path

McArdle said the team simply drove too far in the wrong direction last season and then found the way home virtually blocked.

"It's like you're climbing up a tree and you're making advances and you reach a decision point and you choose a branch," he said. "You start crawling out that branch. You're getting better and keeping pace with the opposition, but something goes wrong. The hardest thing in the world to do is realize that you're on the wrong branch and that you need to crawl back a little bit and select a different path."

High-level racing teams, like aircraft carriers, can't turn on a dime. Core change takes time.

"Before, we were reacting week by week and getting ourselves further and further off the edge," McArdle said. "Now we have to pick our path, and we'll get out of this. I can't tell you that we're going to show up in Atlanta (March 1, for the first non-restrictor-plate race of the schedule) and rock the house, but, hopefully, we've gotten back to being relevant as opposed to how we ended the season – frankly, being irrelevant."

Asked if the issues were about parts, processes or people, McArdle, smiling, said, "Yes. And getting out of the problems will be all about people.

"We haven't made radical changes, but we're different. If you're three-10ths of a second off on lap times on a run at a mile-and-half track, you're yards off, not inches. The reality is that we were off. How far? Gosh, a yard? A mile? Does it matter? We were off enough to prevent us from being competitive."

'It's been a rough two years'

Stenhouse, a bright young driver who won two Xfinity championships at Roush, probably has the most to lose if the team's issues continue to fester. He said some of his problems last year were caused by trying to squeeze high performance from mediocre race cars.

"We really weren't capable of making a 20th-place car a top-five car," Stenhouse said. "When you're making wholesale changes and trying to make a big leap on a weekend, you tend to miss it.

"I think our cars will be better to start with this season. We just need a little more patience. It's been a rough two years. I really don't lack confidence in my ability to get the job done in the race car. I've performed in each race car I've been in, and I want the Cup car to be no different."

Biffle, about to start his 13th full-time season in Cup cars at RFR, is optimistic.

"I think we will show up at Daytona and be really prepared and at the first four or five downforce races of the season," he said. "I hope Roush Fenway is back in the game and competing in that top level again."

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