Kevin Kidd, Tommy Wheeler take over as leaders at Roush Fenway Racing

Roush Fenway Racing has announced its lineup for the 2017 season with numerous changes made to its organization.

Kevin Kidd will take over as Competition Director

Kevin Kidd will resume his role as the Sprint Cup Series Competition Director and Tommy Wheeler will serve as the team's Operation Director in 2017.  The team announced that it will be leasing its charter from the 16 car and loaning driver Chris Buescher to JTG Racing in 2017.

"We have been able to shore up our plans for 2017 and we feel that this will continue to move us in a direction that will yield improved performance and results," said owner co-owner Jack Roush.  "We say improvement in our cars and made substantial gains in our performance at times last season, and we will continue to build on that by maintaining a robust engineering group in order  to take the next step by consistently running up front."

Matt Puccia who led Trevor Bayne last season on the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Racing team will return

Puccia will remain crew chief for Trevor Bayne in 2017

to duty as the leader of the team in 2017.  It will be the first time that Bayne will have the same crew chief for consecutive seasons while at Roush Fenway Racing in the Cup Series.  Brian Pattie, who was the crew chief Greg Biffle on the No. 16 Cup Series team, will take over as the crew chief of the No. 17 car and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., as Nick Sandler who was the crew chief of the team will be moved to the role of Director Of Engineering.

Robbie Reiser who was moved from his position last week, will remain with the organization in a yet to be determined position.

Kidd who moved to Roush Fenway Racing in 2015, served as the team manager of the Cup Series teams after coming from Joe Gibbs Racing where he worked as a crew chief for several seasons.

Wheeler has been on board Roush Fenway since 2009, he has 20-plus years of experience in the sport, he served in many positions for the team, including the team's production director since 2011, overseeing the building and production of all the organization's Cup and XFINITY cars.

This will be the first time since 1995 that Roush Fenway less than 3 cars in the Cup Series.

Reiser moved from general manager position at Roush

It's that time again.  The carousel of changes in the NASCAR world is happening once again right after the season has ended.  Once again Roush Fenway was in the news yesterday afternoon with a huge announcement.

Greg Biffle and Robbie Reiser both are out at RFR

Long-term Roush Fenway member Robbie Reiser has been relieved of his general manager duties after serving the role since the 2008 season when he stepped down from being the crew chief of Matt Kenseth.  Reiser won Roush Fenway's first Sprint Cup (then Winston Cup) with Kenseth in 2003.

Word is that Reiser was offered a position in car production but has yet to decide where his future will be in the sport.  This could be the first of many moves to move Roush Fenway Racing in a different direction since neither Trevor Bayne nor Ricky Stenhouse Jr finished in the top-20 in the points standings and failed to win a race in 2016.

Stenhouse and Bayne have been teammates
Since 2010 in the Xfinity Series

For the last two seasons the organization has made critical hires to try to help the improvement of its cars and the atmosphere of the shop.  While both Bayne and Stenhouse did show improvement on the track in their statistics, the struggles on track were still clear that there needed to be more changes made to the organization to help improve them for the future and possibly get back to 3 cars.

The two drivers finished 10 points apart in the final standings in 21st and 22nd and looked to be making improvements on the season until mid-August when the series left Bristol.  It appeared after Chris Buescher won the race at Pocono for Front Row Motorsports things slid backwards for both Bayne and Stenhouse.  The two drivers did make huge improvements on where they were

Roush Fenway headed to 2 cars in 2017?

It didn't take long for the domino's to begin to fall at Roush Fenway Racing after the season ended on Sunday in Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Many had been hearing the rumors going around, including myself about Greg Biffle leaving the organization at the end of the season to go somewhere else.  On Monday afternoon, Biffle posted on twitter that it was a mutual agreement to part ways that had been in place months ahead for the end of the end of 2016.  Then later in the afternoon news began to start coming out that Chris Buescher would be going to JTG Daughtery Racing on a loan out from Roush Fenway and Ford Performance next season in a second car.

Will Stenhouse(left) and Trevor Bayne be a two-car pair in 2017?

That leaves the obvious out there for fans to really see the true light in this.  Roush is going to be a two-car operation for the first time since 1995 when Mark Martin and Ted Musgrave were in the 6 and 16 cars for Roush Racing.  There is a lot of problems with the organization right now and many speculate that it is the upper deck management group that is running the organization, Robbie Reiser and Steve Newmark.   Two years ago I thought the hiring of Mark McArdle and Kevin Kidd was progress and then Kevin Kidd began to bring in more key people to the organization last December.

In March 2015, Kidd made comments about the progression he felt about the organization and believed that it was going to take several seasons to rebuild things.

"Rome was not built in a day and we're in the process of building Rome back up," told Motorsports.com at the time.  "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 years 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 of saying it will take two to three years, but it's going to take time."

"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 wow we'll do business in the future.  Ultimately, that change, more so than nuts and bolts of race cars, but change of our working philosophies, that's what will get us back to a competitive level - and that takes time."

Now we're another year down the road and yes the organization did improve from 2015 but it was the first time since Jack Roush opened shop in 1988 that one of his cars did not win a race in either series in NASCAR.  So now it appears that going back to two cars might be the way to go but why?

There is less information to spread around between two cars than three, the drivers can communicate more freely with each other and so can the engineers and crew chiefs.  While we have not heard if there are going to be crew chief and crew changes to either Bayne or Stenhouse's teams next season we do know they will be the drivers and know that they can work together. I believe that the organization took more of what Biffle wanted than the two younger drivers needed and it wasn't paying its due.

Team Penske has been making it with two cars and drivers that have good chemistry for quite a while in the Sprint Cup Series.  Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski have been able to win races and be competitive as a two-car team up until Team Penske paired with the Wood Brothers to bring up Ryan Blaney in the Sprint Cup Series.

Bayne, AdvoCare one of the few deals that are working off the track

I sat and listened to a lot of people push some rumors in front of my face the past two months, a lot of it was pretty negative towards Trevor Bayne and his sponsor AdvoCare.  AdvoCare and Trevor Bayne have been a solid core since the beginning of the 2014 season when they joined up with one another for Bayne's final Xfinity Series season. AdvoCare won the 2013 championship with Austin Dillon on the No. 3 Richard Childress Chevrolet in the Xfinity Series and had been on his car since 2012, however, AdvoCare liked what they seen in Bayne when he met their lead man at the track.

Understanding a relationship that sponsors and drivers have can sometimes be pretty hard, however, there is a big SPARK between Trevor Bayne and AdvoCare that makes this partnership work out.  He is liked among most of the independent distributors that provide AdvoCare products to people.  This is a well spoken young man that handles himself well in front of the camera, he has a setback with multiple sclerosis and still races. 

It was a couple of weeks ago my elementary school PE teacher gave NASCAR a big shout out for being the only sport that prayed before every event and telling the TV networks that carry them you don't cut the camera.  I brought up the Christian base of the France family, and then I replied on face book about Trevor Bayne.  He researched him and found he had MS.  I explained that Bayne stayed fit with great products from his sponsor and he was a very well recognized face in the sport as the youngest Daytona 500 winner.

I have a friend who is a Jimmie Johnson fan and when she first began watching Trevor that he was the type of person that she would want a daughter to bring home to you an introduce.  Part of that is why AdvoCare really reps the benefits of having him as one of their Sports Endorsers.  From 1993-2000, Mark Martin had sponsorship from Valvoline Oil and they shared a very similar relationship with one another.  Sponsors and drivers sometimes have that working relationship together that sometimes it isn't always about on track results. 

Bayne keeping solid deal with AdvoCare a plus for Roush

Yesterday in the midst of an announcement many were eased of some rumors that had been spreading around that Roush Fenway was trying to outs Trevor Bayne as a driver.  The team announced that AdvoCare and Bayne had renewed their deal with the organization for three more seasons, through the 2019 season.

There have been driver/sponsorship pairings that have blossomed throughout the years, look at how long STP stuck by Richard Petty, Miller with Rusty Wallace, Dupont with Jeff Gordon, Valvoline with Mark Martin, or Lowe's with Jimmie Johnson.  The fact is AdvoCare and Bayne have really had a good pairing together, even though they have yet to find their way into victory lane together in NASCAR.  They did win the ARCA race at Pocono in 2015 in a unique designed car.  Their relationship goes far more than just the sponsorship, Bayne is an avid user of their products and he is an Independent Distributor for the company, along with his wife Ashton.

What many fans hate to admit is NASCAR is a big a business in itself and it is driven by sponsorship.  When all these rumors came up there were fans that expected AdvoCare was going to ditch Bayne because of the performance, but what many don't understand is there is always another side to the story we're never told.  It's not always on track performance that gets a sponsorship out there, it takes a solid spokesman for that company to go to the meet and greets.  I don't think I've read a negative thing from an AdvoCare rep yet that has seen and met Trevor and Ashton, and now little Ellie at their meets during race weekends. 

There are just some sponsors that are made for the driver and vise versa.  The big thing is Roush Fenway really needed to push to keep this deal in their organization for a major reason, they are struggling to keep sponsorship on the other two cars and it's why the big rumor of switching to two cars is really the biggest rumor coming up now.  Like Trevor or not, he is solidly the only guy at Roush that can provide the team with major sponsorship for the entire season.

Done Deal: Bayne, AdvoCare sign multi-year agreement with Roush Fenway

Roush Fenway Racing announced this afternoon that they have signed a new three year renewal with AdvoCare to continue to be the primary sponsorship on Trevor Bayne's No. 6 Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. 

The company has been a partner with Trevor Bayne since the opening of the 2014 NASCAR Xfinity Series season and moved up with the 2011 Daytona 500 champion to the Sprint Cup Series in 2015. 

"AdvoCare has been an outstanding partner to work with, and I am really excited to continue this relationship and represent AdvoCare for three more seasons," Bayne said.  "It's a top notch organization with a great group of employees and Independent Distributors who share our core principles of hard work and determination."

"For me it's more than a sponsorship," the 25 year old Knoxville native stated.  "I regular use their products to stay in top form on and off the track.  My wife Ashton and I are also Independent Distributors for AdvoCare, as are several other Roush Fenway employees."

This weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, Trevor Bayne will be sporting a new paint scheme in honor
of the Seal Legacy Foundation.

 The Seal Legacy Foundation is dedicated to providing support, including financial assistance and educational assistance to families of wounded and fallen United States Navy SEALs, and other charitable causes benefiting the SEAL community. 

Many Rumors and Questions Surround 2017 Roush Fenway lineup

It was a couple weeks ago after the race weekend in Charlotte ended, I began to get phone calls concerning Trevor Bayne's future with future with Roush Fenway Racing.  Rumors are just that rumors until there is more spark to the fire.  Then the beginning of last week, Greg Biffle started it all off saying he was ready for a change in his career, along with Cheez-It/Kelloggs announcing that they would no longer be with Roush Fenway Racing or Watkins Glen International next season. Then by the end of the week a rumor came out that he would be running a second JTG Daughtery car in 2017, pretty much received a call confirming that on Sunday from a friend who's husband works at HScott Motorsports and was told Steve Addington would be going with Greg Biffle.

Changes in the Horizon for Roush Fenway

Now it seems that the biggest rumor floating around the garage is Roush Fenway going to two cars next season.  It seems logic that it will be Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driving the cars since they are the ones with sponsorship and contracts for the upcoming season.  It has been 21 years since Roush Fenway Racing has ran less than 3 race cars in the Sprint Cup Series circuit, it was 1995 with Mark Martin and Ted Musgrave.  I'm not sure what would happen with their third charter that is on the 16 car, maybe lease to Front Row Motorsports for a short term or to another team.

Two cars would give the team a better chance to to work with one another and it is one less car to float information back and forth to.  I truly believe that might be the way to go if you look at how Team Penske has been doing it the last few years.   Bayne and Stenhouse back in the then Nationwide Series had a good working core chemistry to find the right setups in their race cars from 2010-2011, when the two were competing for RFR full-time in the series then.  Stenhouse won back to back championships in the series in 2011-2012.

Many expected after Ryan Reed ran the race at Talladega last weekend that Roush Fenway would be bringing back the 99 car next season.  However, his sponsor Lilly Diabetes announced that they would be returning to sponsor Reed in the NASCAR Xfinity Series next season.  Rumors are going around that Chris Buescher will return to the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports car for 2017.

I am sure there are going to be some people who disagree with me on what you are about to read but it is my opinion.  I think Greg Biffle going on might be a good thing for this organization in several ways. Biffle is 46 years old and that is a big difference mark in Bayne and Stenhouse who are 25 and 29, so here is where people will likely disagree with me. I think the difference in age has been a hold back for Roush Fenway in a way.  Biffle has been the main driver the team has gone to the past two seasons to put data for the direction they need to go.  His age differential and driving style are much different than the two younger drivers.

So now if Roush does go to the two car system it will be a little easier to direct the team in the direction they need to go.  We will see in the coming weeks when the team makes their announcements what will happen.