muggle not
Team Owner
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
- Messages
- 10,253
- Points
- 1,033
Ford Teams Shift Into Overdrive
TONY FABRIZIO
Published: Aug 25, 2004
Watch a sport long enough and you can see some things coming.
I've been watching NASCAR for a long time, and I've been predicting for months that the Ford teams would be good this year when it counted. Well, it's starting to count, and Ford is starting to look like trouble for their Chevy and Dodge brethren.
All year the focus has been on the Hendrick Motorsports rockets of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and the fast Dodges of Kasey Kahne and Jeremy Mayfield. The Fords have stayed mostly under the radar - even top-10 stalwarts Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch and Elliott Sadler.
But Ford had a couple of things in the works. There was the new engine building alliance between Robert Yates Racing and Roush Racing, which wasn't implemented until last winter. And there was the new cylinder head that the teams didn't have at the start of the year because the engineers needed to do more tweaking.
Now, all the Ford teams are running Yates-Roush engines with the new cylinder heads. And with the Chase for the Championship less than a month away, we're seeing what the Fords might be capable of with the $5 million championship on the line.
Fords finished first, second, third, sixth, eighth and 10th on Sunday at Michigan - all but one of those Roush Fords - led by winner Greg Biffle. So strong were the Fords that Carl Edwards, who'd never driven a Nextel Cup car until last week at a test, finished 10th in Roush's No. 99 car.
Sunday's Ford spanking may have been an aberration, but there's reason to believe the Fords are going to be tough from here on.
Kenseth, Busch and Sadler are fifth, sixth and seventh in the standings and looking pretty good for making the Chase field. Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett have been creeping forward for weeks and now sit 12th and 13th - only 33 and 58 points below the 10th- place cutoff, respectively.
Jarrett, who finished third Sunday in his Yates Ford, says the engine building alliance is indeed paying off.
``We're all benefiting from that and that shows when you get to a place like [Michigan], where horsepower means a lot. [RYR general manager] Doug Yates and his people have done a tremendous job. I don't know how many people there are from Roush over there, but there are a number of them and they're all working very good together. Certainly, that has to help their program and it's benefited ours, too.'' WEIGHING IN: Tony Stewart doesn't like one of NASCAR's major rule changes for 2005 but does like the other.
He doesn't favor the rule that limits teams to two NASCAR-determined gear ratios - a move designed to keep costs down by preventing teams from producing more expensive, high-revving engines.
``There are probably other rules that could be changed other than a gear rule,'' Stewart said. ``It's still going to cost teams a lot of money to figure out how they're going to get the most power for the two gear ratios NASCAR determines for use at a race venue.
``I think their [NASCAR's] thoughts are in the right place in terms of trying to find ways of reducing costs for these race teams, but there's still going to be a lot of money spent as teams try to figure out how to get the most power from the gears that are available.''
Others competitors, including Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, also have criticized the gear-ratio rule. Knaus have said that limiting the gear ratios unnecessarily stifles creativity.
Stewart does like the rule that cuts an inch from the rear spoilers.
``It's the same for everybody, whether you're a big budget team or a small budget team,'' Stewart said. ``Everyone is going to have to deal with it. Their [NASCAR's] hope and our hope is that it reduces aero-push. But it's going to be a trial-and-error-type process.'' STILL ON SCHEDULE: The massive infield reconstruction project at Daytona is still on schedule for completion for December, track officials say.
TONY FABRIZIO
Published: Aug 25, 2004
Watch a sport long enough and you can see some things coming.
I've been watching NASCAR for a long time, and I've been predicting for months that the Ford teams would be good this year when it counted. Well, it's starting to count, and Ford is starting to look like trouble for their Chevy and Dodge brethren.
All year the focus has been on the Hendrick Motorsports rockets of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and the fast Dodges of Kasey Kahne and Jeremy Mayfield. The Fords have stayed mostly under the radar - even top-10 stalwarts Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch and Elliott Sadler.
But Ford had a couple of things in the works. There was the new engine building alliance between Robert Yates Racing and Roush Racing, which wasn't implemented until last winter. And there was the new cylinder head that the teams didn't have at the start of the year because the engineers needed to do more tweaking.
Now, all the Ford teams are running Yates-Roush engines with the new cylinder heads. And with the Chase for the Championship less than a month away, we're seeing what the Fords might be capable of with the $5 million championship on the line.
Fords finished first, second, third, sixth, eighth and 10th on Sunday at Michigan - all but one of those Roush Fords - led by winner Greg Biffle. So strong were the Fords that Carl Edwards, who'd never driven a Nextel Cup car until last week at a test, finished 10th in Roush's No. 99 car.
Sunday's Ford spanking may have been an aberration, but there's reason to believe the Fords are going to be tough from here on.
Kenseth, Busch and Sadler are fifth, sixth and seventh in the standings and looking pretty good for making the Chase field. Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett have been creeping forward for weeks and now sit 12th and 13th - only 33 and 58 points below the 10th- place cutoff, respectively.
Jarrett, who finished third Sunday in his Yates Ford, says the engine building alliance is indeed paying off.
``We're all benefiting from that and that shows when you get to a place like [Michigan], where horsepower means a lot. [RYR general manager] Doug Yates and his people have done a tremendous job. I don't know how many people there are from Roush over there, but there are a number of them and they're all working very good together. Certainly, that has to help their program and it's benefited ours, too.'' WEIGHING IN: Tony Stewart doesn't like one of NASCAR's major rule changes for 2005 but does like the other.
He doesn't favor the rule that limits teams to two NASCAR-determined gear ratios - a move designed to keep costs down by preventing teams from producing more expensive, high-revving engines.
``There are probably other rules that could be changed other than a gear rule,'' Stewart said. ``It's still going to cost teams a lot of money to figure out how they're going to get the most power for the two gear ratios NASCAR determines for use at a race venue.
``I think their [NASCAR's] thoughts are in the right place in terms of trying to find ways of reducing costs for these race teams, but there's still going to be a lot of money spent as teams try to figure out how to get the most power from the gears that are available.''
Others competitors, including Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, also have criticized the gear-ratio rule. Knaus have said that limiting the gear ratios unnecessarily stifles creativity.
Stewart does like the rule that cuts an inch from the rear spoilers.
``It's the same for everybody, whether you're a big budget team or a small budget team,'' Stewart said. ``Everyone is going to have to deal with it. Their [NASCAR's] hope and our hope is that it reduces aero-push. But it's going to be a trial-and-error-type process.'' STILL ON SCHEDULE: The massive infield reconstruction project at Daytona is still on schedule for completion for December, track officials say.