31 Moments: No. 27 -- Roush drivers disappoint at Michigan
Editor's note: For the month of December, FOXSports.com will count down 31 moments that defined the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. This is No. 27.
Once upon a time, Michigan International Speedway really was the house that Jack built. Jack Roush, that is.
Roush, the founder and co-owner of Roush Fenway Racing, always was a force to be reckoned with at the 2-mile MIS oval, which is not too far from Livonia, Michigan-based Roush Industries, the team owner's global enterprise. And MIS is also in the vicinity of Ford Motor Co. headquarters in Dearborn.
Given all that, MIS is the closest thing Roush has to a hometown track. Not surprisingly, the team historically has excelled whenever it unloaded at the Irish Hills of Michigan. Roush Fenway Fords have won 13 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races at Michigan, and even on the rare occasions they didn't win, they were almost always in the hunt.
Until the Quicken Loans 400, that is, the June race that proved to be the team's lowest point in a very long time.
At a track where excellence is expected, Roush Fenway struggled mightily. Greg Biffle qualified 18th and finished 20th, Carl Edwards started 22nd and finished 23rd, while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished 27th after qualifying 30th. None of the three drivers led even a single lap, and Biffle was the only one to finish on the lead lap.
It was a hugely disappointing effort for the entire team, which for the first time since June 2000 failed to place a single driver in the top 10 at MIS.
"We've just got to get better as a group," said Edwards, the only Roush Fenway driver to win a race in 2014. "That's the way it is."
Things got only marginally better in the August Michigan race, where Biffle finished 10th, Stenhouse 15th and Edwards 23rd, two laps down.
"I guess it was a good day," said Biffle. "We got a top-10. Really we wanted to run up in the top five. We had a car to do that, and that track position (but) we would get loose around other cars. We still have to work on that with our race cars. We get around other cars and can't drive them as good. It was a great day for us because we had a lot more speed than last time here."
"We qualified 10th and finished 15th and ran right around 15th the whole time which is kind of a goal," said Stenhouse. "Obviously, we want to run top 10 and pass as many cars as we can, but all in all we accomplished what we were looking to do."
Although Edwards and Biffle would both go on to make the Chase, the team never was able to figure out how to win at the 1.5- and 2-mile intermediate tracks that once were Roush Fenway's bread and butter.
