Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Downsizing, revamping Roush Fenway could help bring it back


Back in 2010, Roger Penske went through something very similar to what Jack Roush is doing right now.  They were running three cars in the Sprint Cup Series but were struggling to get more than one car going in the direction and Team Penske went to two-cars the following season with Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski.

There are some advantages to running just two cars in the shop and while people keep posting the organization is killing itself doing this, it just maybe the cure to their issues altogether.  Roush Fenway began at the end of the season making moves to reposition personnel for 2017.  They started first by moving Robbie Reiser out of the Competition Director position and was replaced by Kevin Kidd.  In my opinion this was something that needed to happen almost two seasons ago, the organization had become stale with Reiser as its CD.  The organization's communication stand point just wasn't where it needed to be at to go any further with Reiser as its lead man.

I have felt that Kevin Kidd since the first time he really began to speak up in 2015 was going to be the person to lead this team if he was given the chance.  I think there is a strong point to having someone who came from another organization see what has happened for the past two seasons and now he's taken over as the team's Competition Director.

To be the director I feel there are a lot of things that need to come into play for the entire organization.  He needs to have better communication with the entire team than Reiser did, he needs to be able to know the current rules package that keeps changing every time we turn around, and he has to be very open minded and keep a good relationship with his team in order for them to go forward in the future.  Then there is the factor of going to two drivers and their relationship.

There's a lot of people on social media that want to bad mouth the two drivers Roush Fenway Racing has on board but these two drivers can race.  There is a factor in the cars the past few years that fans aren't considering when they've seen Bayne and Stenhouse have incidents on the track.  Trevor Bayne is a very talented young driver, he showed it coming up through the NASCAR Xfinity Series and his first years with the Wood Brothers.  Trevor Bayne is one of the most positive people I've listened to in the garage area, but it's hard to remain that way when you are driving a car that hasn't been able to turn through the corner for the past few years.

He and Stenhouse both have been driving mid pack cars since the 2012 season at Roush Fenway Racing, some don't want to see that but the facts are there.  That is why there are so many changes going on in the off-season.  Take for instance the race at Dover earlier in 2016, Bayne was able to climb his way into the top-10 because the car began to get better and he started to have the drive off the corner.  However it will not stop with the cars, the drivers are going to have to do exactly what the duo at Team Penske has been able to do and work together with one another and not be a rival with  one another.

We all know that these two had a solid relationship with one another in their earlier days in the NASCAR XFINITY Series when Stenhouse won back to back titles.  There was the Ricky Vs Trevor YouTube videos that gave fans a good laugh, and their chemistry was very good with each other.  The drivers have to go back and find what they had years ago to help bring the organization back to what it was.

The two drivers finished neck and neck in the standings this past season in the NASCAR Cup Series.

With Matt Puccia and Roman Pemberton returning to work with Trevor Bayne next season on the No. 6 AdvoCare team, I think that it brings a little more confidence by having the same two voices on the radio next season that he was able to hear in 2016.

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