For Sunday’s Sheetrock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, the five Roush drivers are at the type of track where their team always has been strong. The 1.5-mile Joliet facility is a classic “intermediate” track.
“For the last month we’ve been strong and a contender, and that’s all you can ask for,” said Roush’s Jamie McMurray, winner of last week’s Pepsi 400 at Daytona. “If it’s your day, then it is, and if it’s not, then there’s not anything you can do about it.”
McMurray is the most significant Roush breakthrough in that he broke a personal 166-race losing streak last week.
Teammate Carl Edwards started the comeback on June 17 with a victory at Michigan International Speedway. It was the first for Roush since senior driver Matt Kenseth won Feb. 25 at Fontana, Calif.
At the two races between Michigan and Daytona, “at Sonoma (Calif.) and Loudon (N.H.), Carl and I had a chance to win,” McMurray said.
NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow design, on which Roush had fallen behind earlier in the season, was used at both the Sonoma road course and the tight, 1-mile Loudon oval.
Traditional cars will be used at Chicagoland.
“[This] is the kind of track where I feel very comfortable,” Edwards said. “At Michigan we were awesome, and this is a lot like that.
“I feel like these standard cars and downforce tracks are where we’re best right now, but New Hampshire was pretty awesome and Daytona (a restrictor-plate race with standard cars) was pretty good.”
McMurray led late in the Sonoma race, but ran out of gas just after being passed by Juan Pablo Montoya, who went on to win on fumes. If luck had been reversed, McMurray likely would have won.
Then in New Hampshire, Edwards was dominant before a fluke accident in his pits—his crew dropped his car off the jack before the tires were on—cost him the race.
Last week it all came together, with all five Roush drivers finishing in the top 12. Edwards, who “pushed” McMurray to victory in the draft, wound up fourth. Greg Biffle was sixth, Kenseth eighth and rookie David Ragan 12th.
Could this be the beginning of a streak, like the one in which NASCAR’s best Chevrolet team, Hendrick Motorsports, won 10 of the first 14 races this year?
“I don’t know if it can be the beginning of a streak; I hope it’s the beginning of us being competitive every week,” Edwards said. “To have a streak, you have to be really dominant. Up to this point, the Hendrick cars obviously have been dominant.”
Edwards points out that team owner Jack Roush has told them repeatedly if they can be on a level playing field for the 10-race “Chase” playoffs beginning in September, they can have an “awesome” season.
Hendrick driver Jimmie Johnson understands the Roush challenge.
“I can’t say that surprises me,” said the reigning Nextel Cup champion, who has four victories this season, tied with teammate Jeff Gordon for most on the tour.
“I had been more surprised they had struggled. I’ve been like, ‘What’s going on? Why haven’t they been up front fighting for wins?’ And now it looks like they have themselves going in the right direction.”
Roush admits he got behind early on Car of Tomorrow development and was distracted trying to catch up.
“Those things really had me busy, so we got behind,” Roush said. “We didn’t run as well at some of the mile-and-a-half tracks as we’d like, but we’re back on track. I was maybe complacent about the mile-and-a-half stuff we had in the past, thinking it was good enough …”
Roush also had to dig out of a management mistake he admits making last year. He had poor pairings of crew chiefs with drivers. He broke up Edwards and Bob Osborne, who had won four races together in 2005, and sent Osborne to work for McMurray. But McMurray and Osborne didn’t click, so the switch was double trouble.
This year, Roush put Edwards and Osborne back together and brought in steady-nerved Larry Carter, a veteran of Penske Racing who had worked with Rusty Wallace, for McMurray.
But it has taken this long to get driver-crew chief communication precise again.
“Carl and Bob got put back together this year, [but] you’re not going to have immediate success,” McMurray said. “And then Larry and I got working together.”
The glitches gone, Roush Fords are factors again.
“We’ll be heard from more before the year is over,” Roush said.
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