Auto racing: Roush team playing catch-up in COT's second season

Date published: 2/15/2008

BY JIM McCONNELL

Jack Roush never thought playing by the rules could be so painful.

Last season, as NASCAR began to phase in its next-generation Car of Tomorrow, its teams were forbidden to engage in test sessions not already approved by the sanctioning body.

Roush did what he thought was the right thing. While rumors swirled that rival organization Hendrick Motorsports was testing the new car at every possible opportunity, Roush's five-car operation didn't participate in a COT test until June.

By that point, Roush Fenway Racing was in serious catch-up mode. While Roush's cars won seven races and two of his drivers (Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth) qualified for the season-ending Chase, Hendrick dominated the COT races and won its second consecutive Cup championship.

"If you're not testing that car, you're not gathering data," said Dan Davis, director of Ford Racing Technology. "If you're not gathering data, you don't know how to do simulations--you don't have the fundamental data you need in order to do the things that the engineers in Dearborn can use to make the car better.

"These cars look real simple when you see them on the track, but the processes and the analysis and some of the simulation work that goes on is anything but simple."

So last month, as more than 200 journalists from around the world flocked to suburban Charlotte, N.C., for NASCAR's annual media tour, Roush stood before a gathering of Ford executives and fellow team owners and publicly fell on his sword.

"I was mostly responsible for not making the commitment for the Roush Fenway teams to go underground and to get non-Goodyear tires and to go to race tracks that NASCAR wasn't sanctioning for the tests. I got the deal behind," Roush said. "I thought that they were going to stop us from testing. They said they were going to control the tests. We were all going to test the same place, and I figured it was a matter of time before the guillotine fell on the people that were testing the cars.

"I was wrong. I misread NASCAR. They wound up going with the flow of what the teams wanted to do."

Date published: 2/15/2008