The culture at Roush Fenway had to change

In all respect to what Roush Fenway was, the times have changed so much that the culture around Roush Fenway's ways had to change with new blood coming into the organization.  We're heading into the first off week of the season for the NASCAR teams and I have to take a look at few things that went in the wrong direction over the last few years.

Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse have a discussion in the garage

It's hard to admit that you've gone in the wrong direction.  I think that Jack Roush, Robbie Reiser and Steve Newmark all had to take a look at the way that this race team has been ran over the past few seasons.  One of the biggest problems is admitting when you went the wrong direction and Roush did just that a few seasons ago.  I have to look back at things and the issues started midway through the 2011 season and they excelled when Roush re-signed Carl Edwards to a major contract and team members from what I have heard had to take a pay cut or they were let go.

The problems just became worse and worse as the Gen-6 Ford Fusion came out.  The team needed fresh, new faces amongst their organization in engineering and overall leadership.  The organization hired two new key members to its senior leaders by hiring Kevin Kidd away from Joe Gibbs Racing as its Sprint Cup Series director and Mark McMardle who had experience working with several teams in the past as its engineering director.   The team needed someone with fresh new ideas to come into the team and change its culture of work around. 

“Rome was not built in a day and we’re in the process of building Rome back up,” Kidd said “It’s going to take time. That’s the simple truth. I had some perspective on it this week like when you look at other organizations that are down and trying to build back up – Ganassi comes to mind. Penske, maybe less so but maybe from a few year back. It’s a solid two to three year process of trying to get back to full form and ultimate competitive level. I’ll stop short of saying it will take two to three years, but it’s going to take time.

“One car debuted on one weekend is not going to be the answer to of our problems. When you look at where we’re trying to go with this, we’re trying to change the culture of Roush Fenway Racing, how we’ve done business in the past and how we’ll do business in the future. Ultimately, that change, more so than nuts and bolts of race cars, but the change of our working philosophies, that’s what will get us back to a competitive level – and that takes time.”

Earlier in the season, many said the shop had a totally different atmosphere than before, even the walls and floors were redone.  The team as a whole seemed to have a lot more confidence but the results have not changed since the season began, as Biffle is the only one with a top-10 finish in the season opening Daytona 500.

The new chassis will be debuted at Texas Motor Speedway in two weeks.  On the other side of things, the Xfinity Series program seems to have turned the corner with drivers Chris Buescher, Ryan Reed, Bubba Wallace and Elliott Sadler.  Buescher is only five points out of the lead.  So it would seem that the Sprint Cup program might be able to take some of their package from Xfinity and put it to use in Sprint Cup.