NASCAR Media Tour Day 3
The morning session was led off by Roush Fenway Racing, which enters into the 2015 season with its youngest lineup ever, with rookie driver and Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne joining third-year driver Rick Stenhouse, Jr. and veteran driver Greg Biffle.
Entering his 17th year driving for the Roush organization, Biffle is now the elder statesman among other Roush drivers, and – with the departure of Carl Edwards – the only one among them to have raced in the Chase.
Biffle made the Chase again in 2014, but was eliminated in the opening round, which seemed emblematic of the problems that plagued Roush Fenway through the entire 2014 season.
"We're not going to sugarcoat it – last year we were at the bottom of the heap compared to the other teams, with no light at the end of the tunnel," said Biffle. "I will tell you that this off season and the no testing that has gone on.I really feel like it has been a turning point for Roush Fenway because it has given us the down time and opportunities to step back and look at potentially where we had made the wrong turn in the road. We really feel like we have found some things we have done wrong. We feel we have righted those things."
It was being that the bottom of the heap that prompted Carl Edwards to jump ship to join Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of last season, something Biffle himself considered at one time – "I wrestled with that for about probably a six month period" – but team owner Jack Roush prefers to focus on what the team was able to accomplish last year and look forward to the season ahead.
"Looking back, I took the view as we thought about things this winter and changes we would consider that the glass is definitely more than half full," said Roush. "We won two road races on the year, one Nationwide and one on the Cup side. The hole in our performance was in the 1.5 mile race tracks which have typically been our strength. There are a lot of things involved."
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| Team Petty |
Next up on the schedule was "The King" Richard Petty and Richard Petty Motorsports, who welcomed the media with a video presentation of their new 40,000 square-foot shop in Mooresville, NC and introduced former Indy500 winner Sam Hornish, Jr. as driver of the no. 9 Ford Fusion.
RPM made the Chase last season with Aric Almirola's win in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona last July, making the first time the team had made the Chase since 2009.
The team stumbled out of the gate in the opening race of the Chase with a DNF, dropping them to 16th in points. They were never able to pull themselves out of the hole they dug, and were among the first four teams eliminated from the Chase. Still, it was a strong showing for a team that had finished 18th or worse in points in the last three seasons.
[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]"I think we surprised some people," Almirola said of making the Chase. "We went out and set some pretty lofty goals for ourselves to get the 43 car back to victory lane and make the Chase and we were able to do both those things. We want to grow from that.
The tour next welcomed Levine Family Racing and the legendary Wood Brothers Racing team, two single-car operations running part-time schedules in the Sprint Cup Series.
LFR, which qualified for 19 of the 22 races they entered last season, return again with a 29-race schedule with driver Michael McDowell. The team's long-time sponsor K-LOVE returns as primary sponsor for 20 races, and will welcome new sponsor Thrivent Financial for 10 races as a primary sponsor and 10 races as an associate sponsor.
Wood Brothers Racing will enter their 65th year of competition in 2015, running a 16-race schedule with rookie driver Ryan Blaney.
After winning the 2011 Daytona 500 with rookie driver Trevor Bayne, team co-owner Len Wood is hopeful that lightning will strike twice with Blaney.
"Ryan is already a proven winner," said team co-owner Len Wood. "It's like it's all new, when you bring a young kid into your organization. If you go back through the history of our team, Cale Yarborough was a kid when he started ÃÆ'¢â‚¬â€Ã-“he won his first race in our car. I like having these young drivers around, it's fun, and they keep you from getting old."
With the departure of Bayne to a full-time ride with Roush Fenway Racing, The Wood Brothers have added Blaney – a Team Penske development driver – and entered into a new technical alliance with Team Penske.
"I think our role with Ford Motor Company is to help develop younger drivers and over the past four years I think we have tried to do that with Trevor Bayne, which we had success at the 2011 Daytona 500," said Wood. "So when he moved on to the full time deal for 2015 we were looking for who would be the next guy. Ryan Blaney's name kept popping up as the guy we need. I think with choosing Ryan, he was a Team Penske affiliated driver so it made perfect sense to switch the alliance to Penske."
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| Team Penske |
Closing out day three of the tour was Team Penske Racing, who are coming off one of their most successful seasons in team history with 22 wins across their NASCAR and IndyCar stables.
Team Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano racked up 11 Sprint Cup wins between them and both qualified for the Chase, with Logano making down to the final four but ultimately finishing fourth in the championship battle.
For 2015, the watch word at Penske is "continuity" as the team has worked to keep everything status quo going into the next season – carrying over the same driver and crew chief combinations among their Sprint Cup teams.
"To me, the key thing was the continuity, the drivers, the crew chiefs, the team and the sponsors," said team owner Roger Penske. "We need that as we go forward. It's amazing in this world today that we can say that all of our sponsors have renewed with us to go forward on multiple year contracts, which gives us a great base to build on as we go into the future.
[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]"To me, teamwork paid off – the way Joey and Brad worked together, the crew chiefs certainly Todd and Paul and the rest of the team was outstanding. To me, it's the right logo. It stands for quality. It stands for many years of racing and, to me, it's gonna to be the foundation and base for us in 2015."
For Keselowski, the chemistry between he and Logano has been key to their success, "the continuity is huge", but Keselowski has also made a reputation for himself for his aggressive driving on the track, which landed him in more than one notable post-race altercations last year.
While it made for great highlights on TV, it didn't endear him to his fellow competitors, but you won't hear Keselowski apologizing.
"You know you're doing something right in this sport when you're racing the establishment and you make them upset," said Keselowski. "I made guys mad racing for the win, it wasn't racing for 20th. You get in a wreck and a fight racing for 20th, that doesn't make SportsCenter. You get in a wreck and a fight with a previous champion, racing for a championship, going for a win; you're probably doing the right things.
"Tim Cindric (Team Penske president) would tell you I should get into a fight every week, because I run better the next week."