Still struggling: Roush Fenway Racing searches for answers after another disappointing day
If there's any truth to the old sports axiom, "You are what your record says you are," Roush Fenway Racing frankly isn't very good right now.
Or at the very least, at the moment Roush Fenway is a shadow of the team that won consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles in 2003-04 and then placed five drivers in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in '05.
Sunday's Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway was another frustrating race for the Roush Fenway group, with Greg Biffle finishing 21st Trevor Bayne 24th and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 28th. None of the team's three drivers finished on the lead lap. In fact, none of them even finished one lap down. Instead, they were all two laps down. This after neither Bayne nor Biffle qualified in the top 30 and Stenhouse was just 24th.
With nine of 36 Sprint Cup races in the books this season, the Roush Fenway trio has no victories, no poles, one top five and just two top-10 finishes in a collective 27 starts. Stenhouse was fourth at Bristol Motor Speedway a week before Richmond, while Biffle was 10th at Daytona.
And their rankings in the Sprint Cup points parallel where they finished at Richmond: Biffle is 21st, Stenhouse 25th and Bayne 27th. This is not where the team hoped or expected to be at this point, but it is what it is.
For that matter, the Richmond race wasn't what they expected, either.
"We thought our Fifth Third Ford was decent in race trim during practice on Friday," said Stenhouse. "Our car had a different balance on each set of tires that we put on. We were making gains and I thought we could have picked up a few positions there in that last 30 laps but the new set of tires made our Ford super tight. Definitely not the day we wanted but we will go back and keep working on our cars and head to Talladega next weekend."
Early on at Richmond, Bayne twice got lapped and got the Lucky Dog both time, only to lose critical track position on a green-flag pit stop on Lap 264 of 400. A caution flag for debris on Lap 271 caught Bayne two laps down and from there he was unable to make up the lost ground.
"When we were up front with the guys in the top 10 our car had great speed," said Bayne. "I hate that that caution came out during green flag pit stops and trapped us laps down. But I want to thank my guys for working hard all weekend. We'll keep fighting and move on to Talladega next weekend. Anything can happen there."
Bayne is correct. Anything can, and often does, happen at Talladega.
But if Ford's former flagship team is going to have any shot at making the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, it needs to start making something happen very soon.
