Roush's restructuring was a given

With the last three seasons that Roush Fenway Racing has had on the Sprint Cup side, it was a definite given that there were major changes needed to be made within the organization to get things back to being a winning organization.

Based on what I have seen from twitter and a few articles, the organization finally hired outside of the company and went into other companies backyards and grabbed engineers.  With Michael Waltrip Racing falling out at the end of the season that was one of the places I had a feeling RFR would go and get some new help from.  The team hired Kent Day who will now oversee the simulation program at Roush.  They also have hired crew chief Brian Pattie who worked with Clint Bowyer at MWR as Greg Biffle's crew chief.

Romberg brings years of aerodynamic experience from Hendrick

Roush Fenway also went to Hendrick Motorsports and grabbed Kurt Romberg away.  He was the chief aerodynamicist at HMS for 15 years, he worked with General Motors and Petty Enterprises prior to joining Hendrick.  In the past, Roush has been a program that graduated crew members up from the next level, including engineers instead of hiring away from other organizations.  So when I heard that they had done this it was very good news to see.


The infostructure at Roush Fenway the last few years hasn't been at it's best.  It was time to clean house and start with a clean slate in my opinion.  The same issues have been a burden on this team since the 2012 season and there were no signs of it getting any better this past season either.  So when you are put in this position you have to clean up some of the mess.

Ford is bringing in a new body for its Ford Fusion next season and from all the details that I've been told, it will be a much better race car than the one the last couple of seasons.  That might be one of the keys to hiring Romberg because since Ford brought the Fusion in, Roush has struggled highly. It also might be key that the low downforce package will put into place at the majority of the tracks on the schedule in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

This will be Trevor Bayne's second season full-time with Roush Fenway Racing in the Sprint Cup

Stenhouse (left) and Bayne there were 5 top-tens in 2015

Series when 2016 gets here, while I was disappointed in how Bob Osborne handled some of the situations this season; I think it is best that a driver and crew chief get a hold of one another for two seasons.  In my opinion that has been one of the biggest issues for fellow Roush Fenway driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr., he hasn't been able have a steady coach up on the box his first three seasons until he worked with Nick Sandler this past season.  I listened to Trevor Bayne's radio for much of this season and when the same issues come up every weekend with the race cars handling characteristics then there lies a problem with how the chassis is being setup and simulated.

Bayne continuously had an issue with a race car that was tight in the center and loose off.  If you've been around racing long enough you know that it is a bad situation for a driver to have to have inside the car.  So with all of the new hires that came in at Roush that have been announced it is hope that they just might be able to fix some of the issues that the drivers have been faced with the last three seasons.