Posts Tagged ‘Roush Fenway Racing’

Jimmie Johnson scored his 50th Sprint Cup victory of his driving career making his way to the front late to win the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Johnson led the final six laps after taking the lead from Tony Stewart.

The final 10 laps of the race were run under green. During the last caution period, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Stewart pitted for two tires; Kurt Busch and Johnson took four.

The four-tire cars were clearly stronger. Johnson sprinted from sixth to first in only three laps and beat Stewart to the finish by .895 of a second.

“We have worked so hard for this,” Johnson, a winner at Bristol Motor Speedway for the first time, said in victory lane. “I thought we were in trouble. But the four tires were everything.”

Kurt Busch finishing third after leading 278 laps was clearly dissapointed were he finished. On the final restart, he was bottled up behind two tire traffic and didn’t get a shot to challenge for first.

“We were solid all day,” Busch said. “We just got beat by the luck of the draw on the restarts. It’s luck on which lane is going to go. I thought we had them beat. I’d rather lose to any of the other 41 teams but that 48 team.

“I feel exhausted. I feel disappointed.”

With the win, his third in five races this season, Johnson tied Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett at 50 career wins. They are at 10th on the all time list.

Busch had a one second lead over Johnson with 18 laps to go when debris in the fourth turn caused the race’s last caution, putting teams in the difficult position of deciding between two tires and four.

Clouds framed the racetrack virtually all day, and brief rain showers forced a pair of caution flags.

A green flag on lap 412 ended the second rain caution and produced a brief battle for the lead between Penske Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Busch.

The race stage was scrambled on lap 343 when contact between former teammates Greg Biffle and Mark Martin sparked a 13 car wreck in turn three.

Racing in the top five, Martin tapped Biffle, causing both cars to slow. That created an accordion effect behind them not unusual thing at Bristol, and several other lead group cars piled into the melee. Among those impacted were Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Juan Pablo Montoya and Edwards.

The contact ruined a strong performance by Martin, who later returned to the track 91 laps down.

Montoya’s car had been particularly strong all afternoon, and he appeared to be on his way to challenging for his first NASCAR oval-track victory. Instead, he limped around in mid-pack with right-front damage and finished 26th.

Among those Dale Earnhardt Jr. was caught speeding, dropping him from the top five to the rear of the field after the seventh caution. It turned out to be a positive penalty for Earnhardt Jr., who possibly would have been a part of the 13 car wreck on lap 343 if he had been close to the front. He finished seventh.

The race, the fifth of the Sprint Cup season, developed in front of a crowd estimated at 120,000, the first time in 56 races BMS has failed to produce a sellout.

Race Day Notables:

Roush Fenway Racing:

Greg Biffle finished fourth; Matt Kenseth was fifth and Carl Edwards sixth for the organization in one of its best overall efforts of the season. Biffle led five times for 78 laps to boot.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.:

After working his way all the way up to fifth, Earnhardt Jr. was flagged for speeding on pit road on lap 326. As a result, he restarted the race 26th, but settled down and drove his way back to a solid seventh-place finish. The result gained him five spots in the point standings, where he’s now eighth.

Jamie McMurray:

After winning the Daytona 500, the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver finished 17th, 34th and 29th in the next three races. His eighth-place run at Bristol seemed to signal that the team has gotten its game back.

Kyle Busch:

Horrible in practice, just as bad in qualifying, and contact with the wall during the race seemed to just about sum up the weekend for Busch, who won both Cup races here last year. But somehow, the team rallied and Busch worked his way back into the top 10 late in the race to score a hard-earned ninth-place finish.

Speed Tv contributed to this report.

RESULTS: Food City 500 – BRISTOL

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The debuted of Matt Kenseth and Todd Parrott show over the weekend at least the internal reviews were good. Everybody on the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team seemed satisfied.

Kenseth said “It sounds dumb me saying that since we won the first two last year, but to get out of Daytona with all the troubles we had and finish eighth, and then to come here in Todd’s first weekend and finish seventh is pretty good. We ran a little worse than some of our teammates at times and a little better at times, and it seemed like we ran as good as most of the Fords did. I still think
we’ve got some work to do to get all of our cars better as a group, but I thought overall that our team did a good job.”

Crew chief Parrott  “I was very, very happy. I would have liked to have gotten the car closer

for Matt, but we just tweaked on it all day long. It wasn’t too bad. We’ve got some work to do. Those guys up front, obviously, have some really fast race cars, but I think we made some huge gains from where we were over the winter, so I think we’re heading in the right direction.”

The battle of two teamates  Brian Vickers and Scott Speed of Red Bull Racing finished closely 11th and 12th respectively. But their out look of the day was not as close.

Scott Speed “Awesome weekend. I mean, I can’t say enough. I didn’t think we would run as good as we did, honestly. We legitimately ran in the top-10 for the last half of the race, once we got track position. For this being the beginning of my second year here pretty much, I’m really, really happy.”

Brian Vickers “It was disappointing. We had a good car. I think we had a top-five car. A couple of times – just pit strategy, two tires or four tires got us off base. The one time we stayed out because it was raining, we kept running and everybody short-pitted.

They should have thrown the caution because it was raining pretty hard, and they didn’t. And we lost a lot of ground with everybody short-pitting. They had new tires. That pretty much got us behind the rest of the day. They threw the caution out right after that and on pit road they made the wrong adjustment by accident, and we were just way, way, way too loose.”

Speed Tv Contributed to this article

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Todd Parrott has been named crew chief of Roush Fenway Racing’s No. 17 Ford, effective immediately.

Drew Blickensderfer, who has served as crew chief on the No. 17, driven by Matt Kenseth, since the start of the 2009 season, will assume a role in Roush Fenway’s research and development department.

Blickensderfer replaced as crew chief of No. 17 Ford

T. Parrott takes over after team finished eighth at Daytona

Kenseth finished eighth in the season-opening race at Daytona on Sunday.

Parrott, who won the Cup Series championship with Dale Jarrett in 1999, has the third-most wins — 29 — among active crew chiefs in the Cup Series.

Blickensderfer and Kenseth came out of the box hot in 2009, winning the first two races of the year, at Daytona and Fontana. However, that success was short-lived.

Kenseth, the 2003 Cup Series champion, struggled throughout the remainder of the season — only 10 top-10 finishes in the final 34 races — and posted a 15.4 average finish and also missed the Chase for the first time since the system was implemented in 2004. He finished 14th in points.

Parrott was given his first opportunity as crew chief in fall 1995, when he accepted a position at Robert Yates Racing to lead Ernie Irvan’s team. Parrott teamed up with Jarrett for the 1996 season.

Parrott also served as general manager for Robert Yates Racing briefly in 2003, then resumed crew chief duties for Elliott Sadler, David Gilliland and Travis Kvapil while with Yates.

Last year, Parrott was the crew chief for Bobby Labonte and the No. 96 team. The duo also worked together at Petty Enterprises.

NASCAR.com contributed to this report.

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What another great race from Daytona International Speedway. Close racing just about all night with tons of lead changes. But Jammie McMurry driver of the #1 Tracker Boats Chevy Impala prevailed and took the checkered flag winning the 52nd running of the Daytona 500.

The adrenaline rush of the final two laps, the second attempt at a green-white-checkered-flag finish under rules implemented by NASCAR before Thursday’s Gatorade Duels, all but erased the frustration of almost 2½ hours of stoppages as track workers at Daytona International Speedway repaired potholes in the asphalt between Turns 1 and 2.

You couldn’t have asked for a more story book finish. When other teams wrote him off and even Jammie wasn’t sure where he would be for the 2010 season, owner Chip Ganassi  gave McMurry the chance to come back and drive for Earnhardt Ganassi racing.

“Oh, my God!” McMurray screamed after taking the checkered flag. “I can’t freaking believe it right now. Thank you so much. I can’t believe we just won the Daytona 500.”

Later,  in Victory Lane, McMurray fought back tears. Though he won one race last season at Roush Fenway Racing, he struggled in his final year there and was the odd man out from his team’s NASCAR-mandated reduction from five teams to four.

“It’s a dream — it really is,” he said. “To be where I was last year, and for Johnny Morris owner of sponsor Bass Pro Shops, Chip and co-owner Felix Sabates to take a chance on me and let me come back what a way to pay them back.”

With the new areo package and restrictor plate size, cars were not able to come up through the field like years past. There wasn’t a lot of drivers  sitting out back waiting to avoid the big wreck.

The Roush Fenway Ford Fusions look to be strong all night. Greg Biffle in the #16 3M car finished third, Matt Kenseth in the #17 Crown Royal car finished 8th and soon to be father Carl Edwards finished a respectable 9th place.

Clint Bowyer, who led 37 laps, finished fourth, followed by David Reutimann. Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick the 2009 Daytona 500 winner.

Under the new NASCAR rules the race leader must take the white flag and start the final lap under green before the race can end, unless three attempts at a green-white-checkered-flag finish are exhausted.

The field failed to make it to the white flag under green on a restart on Lap 203, because NASCAR called a caution for a wreck off Turn 2 involving Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Robert Richardson and Jeff Gordon. By then, McMurray had rocketed to second position behind Harvick and restarted next to Harvick on Lap 207.

The push from Biffle gave McMurry the lead he need to win the race.

Coming into turn three on the last lap  McMurry look in his mirror only to see the #88 Chevy National Guard car driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr, McMurray said, “No!” but there wasn’t enough time for Jr to make a move for the win.

Nascar .com contributed to this report.

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