Posts Tagged ‘Todd Parrott’

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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