Roush Fenway will debut new chassis at Texas

We've all heard that Roush Fenway Racing will have a new chassis coming to the track in 2015, well the answer is it will be at next weekend's Duck Commander 500 at the 1.5 mile Texas Motor Speedway.

There's been no clear cut answer on why RFR waited this long to debut the car this season, yet there still is no guarantee that it will fix all of their handling issues that have been a burden on them for the past few seasons. 

“In the last three years, we’ve had three iterations of new car and every one is a small improvement is somethings that are known to be significant,” Jack Roush said. “We’re past coiled-bound front springs for the first time which was an advantage we had for a while. We’re past the skewed rear axle which you can have for a while until everyone else figures it out.

“NASCAR has the rules tightened up so much and the cars are so similar that it’s a matter of picking the right aero platform in terms of balance of front to rear. It’s a matter of picking the right springs for the right chassis platform for the ride for the roughness of the track. And it takes a good simulation to do that. There’s more left in the decisions we make about the car than there is room for improvement to make the car better.

“The Texas car I’m hopeful for. It’s not a panacea. It won’t offset the good judgments of the car that we got for springs, bars and shocks. It won’t require something different than the car we’ve got.”

Texas in the past has been one of the team's strongest venues.  Roush has nine wins at the track, 38 top-fives, and 59 top-ten finishes in the 28 races at the track spread around all of their teams cars.  Texas also is the site of Trevor Bayne's first career NASCAR Xfinity Series win for the team in 2011.

Trevor Bayne's teammate Greg Biffle is optimistic about bringing the new car to Texas. 

“We’ve been working on that car since the end of last season and through the winter,” Biffle said. “We’ve already had one test with it at Charlotte and I know there weren’t fireworks going off after the Charlotte test, but still this car is our next version of what it needs to be or where we feel like we need to go.

“So I’m excited to get to Texas and get driving this car, so we can start working on it.  Certainly, the first time you have it out of the shop and on the race track you may not have everything right on it, so with three or five of us, or however many we’re gonna have at Texas over the next couple of intermediate tracks hopefully we can dial that thing in.”