The Blue Oval's Back

I was reading a recap recently of the 1992 Daytona 500. Davey Allison, driving for Robert Yates, won the 500 that year. But what impressed me most was the prevalence of competitive Ford teams. Allison, in a Ford, was followed by Morgan Shepherd, Geoff Bodine and Alan Kulwicki, all in Fords. Polesitter Sterling Marlin and teammate Bill Elliott, both of whom were crashed out of the 500, were in Fords, as were Mark Martin and Wally Dallenbach. All told, there were 14 Fords in that race. Three key title contenders—Elliott, Allison and eventual winner Kulwicki—were driving for Ford teams. If you were a fan of the Blue Oval, it was a good time to be one.

The last couple seasons, though, it hasn't been as satisfying to be a Ford fan.

NASCAR, of course, is different from many motorsports in the sense that manufacturer involvement is secondary. In Formula 1, many fans cheer for Ferrari and McLaren and Renault without a consideration of who the driver is; the guy behind the wheel just gets the championship equipment across the finish line. Australia's famed Bathurst 1000 is an annual contest between Ford and Holden (GM's Australian marque). In NASCAR, where manufacturer support drifted in and out amid changing times and economies, some teams became recognized for their manufacturer of choice, but fans overwhelmingly cheer for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and not for his Chevrolet.

For what it's worth, I'm a GM guy. My family always used to buy American. Given that we weren't a mechanical family, I based my judgments off of looks, and on that front, Dodge and Chevy had Ford beat by miles. Of course, at the time, Dodge had no NASCAR entries, so I sided with Chevrolet. It helped that Dale Earnhardt drove a Chevy. When I got my first car years later, I described it as a 1996 Chevy Monte Carlo Z34 in Earnhardt black.

Yet despite the fact that my favorite driver of my youth, and several other favorites of the time, drove Chevrolets, there was always a driver or two that I liked behind the wheel of a Ford. The most consistent, probably, was Dave Dion. "Dynamite Dave" is also from New Hampshire, a New England short-track legend who was often called on to race at marquée short-track races across the country because, unlike most weekly short-trackers, he raced a Ford. He even ran 12 races in the Winston Cup Series, with a top-ten finish in 1980. In the mid-1990s, he raced in the Busch North Series, the most prestigious touring division in New England at the time. When Dave Dion won the 1996 championship in his orange-and-black #29 Thunderbird, he was one of only two Ford drivers in the top-35 in points, and the only competitive one of those two.

By contrast, at the 1996 Daytona 500 in the Winston Cup Series, twenty-four Ford teams qualified for the race (another few had missed the starting lineup). Eight of the top-ten finishers were in Fords. Five of the top-ten in the season-ending points were Ford drivers. Jack Roush had three teams for Mark Martin, Ted Musgrave and Jeff Burton; Robert Yates had two with Dale Jarrett and the recovered Ernie Irvan. Rusty Wallace was Ford's winningest driver for the year with five wins. Ricky Rudd and Geoff Bodine also scored wins for Ford, and Michael Waltrip won the Winston all-star race with the Wood Brothers.

A lot can change in a few years, never mind in thirteen years.

As the NASCAR boom of the 1990s carried through to the 2000 season, many of the traditional Ford teams faded away. Bud Moore's legendary #15 suffered through the loss of a promising rookie and a failed merger before closing shop. Geoff Bodine sold his team, which became a Chevrolet team in 1999. Ricky Rudd closed his own team in 1999 and went to drive for Robert Yates. Bill Elliott sold his team after 2000, with his team becoming the first factory Dodge team when Chrysler returned to NASCAR in 2001. Melling Racing, the Ford team that Bill Elliott drove for when he won many of his races and his 1988 championship, also became a Dodge team. Penske Racing switched to Dodge in 2003. Brett Bodine had bought Junior Johnson's successful #11 team for 1996, but closed the doors in 2003. Robert Yates retired and sold his team to son Doug, who worked closely with Jack Roush on Ford engine development. Meanwhile, Roush, through acquisition and development, had become Ford's primary NASCAR team, with championships in 2003 with Matt Kenseth and 2004 with Kurt Busch.

Ford had been forced to cut factory support, too. With the economy faltering, Ford pulled factory support from the Busch/Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series. Some independent teams continued to campaign Fords, but only Roush Racing campaigned competitive efforts, planning to close its last Truck Series team after the 2009 season commitments ran out. (Roush sought outside help, partnering with Fenway Sports Group for outside funding.) With the relationship between Jack Roush, Roush Engineering and Ford Motorsports going back to Roush's days in road racing, it made sense for Ford to put their eggs in one basket at Roush Fenway Racing, especially in terms of the development of the FR9 engine program.

And so at Daytona in 2009, Matt Kenseth was one of eight full-time Ford teams in the race (the Wood Brothers were in the race too with longtime Ford driver Bill Elliott, but they were only running part-time). Matt won the 500 and the next week at California. When teammate Jamie McMurray won at Talladega in the fall of 2009, it was only Ford's third win of the season. One of those eight full-time teams had folded after a few races when sponsorship never materialized. That left Jack Roush's five teams, one car for the former Yates powerhouse, and one for Hall of Fame Racing, a venture by some retired football players who partnered with Yates for the 2009 season. The Wood Brothers' cars were lackluster in a part-time effort, and with NASCAR setting a cap on team sizes in the Cup Series, Roush would be forced to dissolve one of his five teams at season's end. McMurray's team, which had not performed since Kurt Busch won the 2004 championship, was the frontrunner for elimination. Carl Edwards, who won nine races in 2008, went winless in 2009, and Matt Kenseth struggled after winning the first two races of 2009, missing the Chase for the Championship for the first time.

The 2010 season started out with promise for Ford fans, though. At the end of the 2009 season, it was announced that Richard Petty Motorsports—the team that began as Bill Elliott's one-car operation and was bought by Ray Evernham to become the first Dodge team in 2001, then merged with a struggling Petty Enterprises after the 2008 season—was switching to Ford. Kasey Kahne, an early Ford development prospect before defecting to Evernham's #9 team, would be in a Ford again. AJ Allmendinger had campaigned a Ford in a few races in 2009 as a warm-up. Paul Menard, who drove for Yates Racing in 2009, brought his sponsorship to RPM for 2010. Meanwhile, the Yates Racing assets, shades of what had been a contending team only nine or ten years before, were bought by restauranteur Bob Jenkins, who switched his three-car Front Row Motorsports team over to Ford. Among FRM's drivers were David Gilliland and, on a part-time basis, Travis Kvapil, both of whom drove for Yates Racing. Roush's fifth team was bought by a Vermont businessman named Bill Jenkins, who kept the #26 and hired crew chief Frank Stoddard and driver Boris Said, both of whom worked together for No Fear Racing testing Roush equipment.

There was promise, and it was largely unfounded. FRM's fortunes were dictated largely by rookie driver Kevin Conway, who brought sponsorship to the team; when the sponsorship failed to bring the promised payments, he was released and Kvapil took over. One of FRM's teams was penalized harshly for a rules infraction at Pocono, setting them even further behind the curve. Latitude 43 Motorsports, the team that bought Roush's #26 car, ran poorly and ran through several drivers before quietly closing shop at season's end. Things were no better for the well-funded teams; AJ Allmendinger was the best performer for Richard Petty Motorsports. Kasey Kahne struggled in the #9 Ford, with rumors early in the season that he would leave for greener pastures. Things got grave at the end of the season, when it was revealed that RPM was delinquent on their debts to Roush Fenway Racing, from who they got their chassis and engines. Photos circulated of the team haulers parked outside Texas Motor Speedway alongside two white Roush Racing haulers; the Roush haulers had the cars and engines RPM needed for Phoenix, and they would not be released until payment was made. There was speculation that the team could fold altogether.

In fact, it was June before a Ford tasted victory lane in either the Cup or Nationwide Series; Carl Edwards finally did so at Road America in the Nationwide Series. Roush's cars were mostly on target, but not in victory lane on the Cup side. Ford did get to victory lane in the Cup Series, at last. Greg Biffle won at Pocono, and again at Kansas. But it was Carl Edwards winning at Phoenix and Homestead that suggested that Ford had finally turned the corner.

Then came Daytona, and a surprise win not only for rookie Trevor Bayne, but for the Wood Brothers, a Ford team since anyone can remember. Fords ran well all day long, and in fact, Bayne held off Roush teammate Carl Edwards to win. The third place car was the Ford of David Gilliland of Front Row Motorsports, more of a fluke for sure, but a great run for the team, all the same. David Ragan had made his play at the win, but an ill-timed restart cost David a shot at the win. Three weeks later, Carl Edwards had a win at Las Vegas, poles at Phoenix and Bristol, and a second-place finish to Kyle Busch at Bristol to back up the pole.

It was around that time I started to think about a Ford resurgence blog entry. It would have been easy to do the same at Daytona, with Ford sweeping the top three and running up front all day. But plate races, as we shall be reminded at Talladega, are notorious wildcards. Ask Phil Parsons, Greg Sacks, Bobby Hillin or any of the other drivers whose Cup careers were defined by the one career win at a plate track. It's after a couple intermediate-track races that it truly shows through. Most of the schedule these days is on intermediate tracks, the mile-and-a-half cookie-cutter D-ovals built in the late 1990s. To put an exclamation point on this note, this weekend at Texas, Carl Edwards broke through again for Ford, winning the pole and race in the Nationwide Series on Friday, the first win for the new Ford Mustang in the Nationwide Series. David Ragan won the pole for the Cup race, but it was Matt Kenseth who led 169 laps to win last night's 500-miler, his first since 2009. Finishing behind him in the top ten were his three Roush teammates and Marcos Ambrose, who took over the #9 this year for RPM. (Ambrose, who ran Toyotas for JTG-Daugherty Racing the last couple seasons, was one of Ford's top drivers in his native Australia before he came to the United States.)

It seems that, between engines and aerodynamics and team dynamics (Kenseth, for one, has struggled since his longtime rival and crew chief Robbie Reiser became Roush's team manager), the Ford teams are starting to get their act back together. It's not just showing in some intangible "oh, they ran great until..." observation. It's showing in the win column, and it's showing in the points standings. Carl Edwards leads the Cup points, Matt Kenseth now sits fourth, and while Roush's other drivers are mired with Ambrose in the lower teens, they are still overcoming some early-season misfortune. Last night's race could be a step in the right direction. (Of note, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. leads the Nationwide Series points with a pole and five top-tens in six races, after spending much of last year dodging criticism that he was not worthy of his Roush equipment.)

Ford critics, myself included, have often remarked on the famed blue oval by saying "well, at least they circled the problem." If they can keep this streak going, maybe they've finally fixed it.

Sorry For Showing Passion

June 25, 2000 was a pivotal date in NASCAR history. That was the day that Jimmie Johnson, driving a Busch car at Watkins Glen, lost his brakes on lap 45. The car caught air, sailed over the gravel trap, and slammed into the first-turn fence, coming to a dead stop. (Here's video, though it's not mine.) Jimmie climbed from the car, unhurt, and saluted the crowd. It was a near-miss, but why pivotal? Because it was the last time Jimmie Johnson showed emotion.

One advantage of being a relatively-unread blogger, and not a journalist, is that I can be a little opinionated. Those friends I have who also like NASCAR (all three of them) know I'm not a Jimmie Johnson fan. When he and Herzog Motorsports were winning in ASA, I wanted to like Jimmie. When he announced he would be racing for Hendrick Motorsports in Cup after a lackluster Busch career, I lost interest. Since then, Jimmie's had his share of success, no doubt. But what I dislike more than his streak of unbeaten championships is his seeming lack of personality and emotion.

I realize that this is an interesting opinion from someone whose favorite active Cup driver was lampooned in post-championship commercials for having the demeanor of a robot.

But there's a difference between a shy, aloof camera presence and a seeming lack of emotion. The latter is the feeling I get from Jimmie Johnson. There's no question that he loves winning. But his approach is too controlled, too muted, too censored. I want to see a driver who treats every win like it's his first. I want to see a driver who can't stand finishing second. I want to see the guy who got wrecked under caution throw his helmet at the other car and ask him what he was thinking. No one remembers Richard Petty's victory-lane speech in the 1979 Daytona 500; they remember what was going on on the backstretch with the guys who almost won.

And for a fleeting instant this weekend, we were treated to that kind of passion from Jimmie, the kind that's so rare you can't help but wonder if he was a political-science major. Late in the going at Martinsville, with a car in the top five and ready for a win, Jimmie was tagged for speeding on pit road. Jimmie and his crew insisted they were in the right; NASCAR disagreed, and the penalty dropped Jimmie out of the top ten. By race's end, he was only able to fight back to eleventh. After the race, Jimmie argued to the press that he had not sped down pit road, that he had kept below the 5-mile-per-hour margin on the 30mph speed limit. He felt NASCAR had timed him wrong in a pit road segment, that with the team's calculations, there was no way he could have been speeding. He tweeted that NASCAR should post pit-road speeds for the fans as a measure of transparency.

And then today, he took it all back. Sorry for being wrong. Sorry for the complaining. Sorry for questioning NASCAR's judgment. Sorry for the tweet.

Translated, it sounds more like: "Sorry for speaking up. Sorry for being controversial. Sorry for getting caught. Sorry for showing passion."

Pit road speed limit in NASCAR is a tricky thing. For a number of reasons, NASCAR stock cars are not equipped with a speedometer. Pre-race pace laps are set at the pit road speed limit for the track, and the teams take a tachometer reading during pace laps (for instance, 3000rpm in second gear). Years ago, officials would time a car between segments on pit road to determine pit road speed. Now, digital telemetry can determine a car's precise speed. To account for not having an accurate speedometer in the cars, there is a five-mile-per-hour buffer on the speed limit. But if you're not cheating, you're not trying...so most teams will use every bit of that buffer they can.

Moreover, the teams know where the timed segments of pit road are. As such, a driver will accelerate into his pit and out of it, as long as he can keep pit road speed when timing begins. Johnson's team had calculated this to a science. On Sunday, in the segment in question, Johnson was clocked at 35.53mph. Pit road speed limit at Martinsville is set at 30mph, plus the 5mph margin of error. NASCAR released those numbers to the public, much as they did when Juan Montoya argued a speeding penalty at Indianapolis when he was dominating the race in 2009. Jimmie and his team pushed the envelope, and they went over the line a little. NASCAR was watching, and they called them on it. Jimmie disagreed with the call, and he said so.

But that doesn't call for an apology. An apology for that is basically an apology for caring, for showing passion, for wanting another one of those grandfather-clock trophies for his living room. I don't want to see the eleventh-place finisher shrug off the finish and say he did okay in the points and he'll have a better week next week. I want him to say he didn't agree with the penalty and he didn't come to finish eleventh. I'm not saying that Tony Stewart's early-career "swat the journalist's tape recorder and walk away" approach is the right answer, either, but all I'm asking for is sincerity. I'd rather see true happiness in a winner's eyes, and true determination in everyone else's eyes. I don't want some watered-down "it's okay" politically-correct response. It's not genuine.

There's the other aspect that Jimmie hinted at in ESPN's article today—that NASCAR could fine him for his comments on Twitter, as it was revealed they had privately done last year to two drivers who questioned NASCAR's officiating in post-race tweets. Come on, Jimmie...you're the five-time defending champion with a squeaky-clean public persona and a history of parroting the company line. Saying "NASCAR called that one wrong" is a little different from suggesting the finish was manipulated for ratings.

After the 1996 World 600, in which Kyle Petty was penalized several laps for aggressive driving that resulted in a major wreck, car owner Felix Sabates argued that Dale Earnhardt would not have been penalized in the same circumstances. The next week at Dover, Petty's Pontiac arrived at the track painted black with a silver body stripe down the rocker panels and white lettering outlined in red, mimicking Earnhardt's Goodwrench #3. In tiny letters on the door, a block of text read "Todo es justo en amor y carreras," roughly translated, "All is fair in love and racing." Sabates argued that, since his car looked like Earnhardt's, NASCAR would turn a blind eye. It caught attention, though not a lot as Petty ran poorly most of the day and Earnhardt won. But the statement was made, replica die-cast cars were sold (of which I own one), and as far as I know, no fines were ever levied.

Suddenly, in an era when a driver feels the need to apologize for showing sincerity, the Kyle Petty protest car seems so long ago.