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."
Roush said an unnamed NASCAR official told him the sanctioning body originally was prepared to require every team owner to sign a document swearing they weren't participating in non-NASCAR tests, but that the paperwork was never sent.
"They changed their mind," Roush added. "It came as a surprise to me."
While Davis acknowledged that Roush's behavior was in keeping with Ford's tradition of ethical business practices, he couldn't deny the impact it had on the race track.
"We come under a lot of scrutiny to do the right thing, and it turns out we misunderstood or someone changed their mind," he said. "Who knows? It happened. The best thing we could do at that point was to regroup and just go like heck.
"Sometimes you need to be a little bit behind and a little bit embarrassed to really get your stuff together, and I guess I feel like that's kind of where we're at. So look out this year."
Actually, Roush Fenway's teams began to see results from a massive increase in COT testing during the second half of last season. Edwards delivered the company's first COT win in August at Bristol.
After NASCAR announced its Cup teams would use the new car on a full-time basis this season, the Ford teams kicked their testing schedule into an even higher gear during the offseason.
"We're improving by leaps and bounds over last year. Now we're just fine-tuning it, and that's what makes the difference between fifth place and 15th place," said David Ragan, who returns for his second season in Roush Fenway's No. 6 Fusion.
It wasn't that long ago that the Ford flagship dominated NASCAR's top series. In 2005, all five of Roush's teams qualified for the Chase; Greg Biffle, Edwards and Mark Martin finished second, third and fourth in the final points standings.
But after sending only two drivers to the Chase in each of the last two seasons, Roush is as determined as ever to return his organization to the top of the Sprint Cup food chain.
To that end, he engineered an ambitious front-office restructuring during the offseason. The key move was taking veteran crew chief Robbie Reiser off Matt Kenseth's pit box and naming him to replace Max Jones, who resigned as Roush Fenway's general manager to become a co-owner of Yates Racing.
"I think Robbie is gonna be a key ingredient in catching up to these other teams," Biffle said. "Robbie is a very smart person. He's a very, very good organizer, and we've lacked that position in the past. We've had people, but not of Robbie's caliber of understanding the race cars, the race teams and how they operate and what we need to do technically behind the scenes. I think Robbie is gonna help bridge that gap."
Jim McConnell: 540/374-5444
Email: jmcconnell@freelancestar.com
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