Roush hopes for reversal
FORT WORTH, Texas — Roush Fenway Racing sure could use another backflip in Texas.
The team is six races into a season that began with Matt Kenseth becoming the first NASCAR Sprint Cup driver in 12 years to win the first two races. But it needs another boost, and there’s no place to do that like Texas.
"We could run here every week, that’d be fine with me," Carl Edwards said. "Yeah, I couldn’t be happier to be coming to Texas."
Edwards twice got to do his trademark celebratory backflip at Texas last year after becoming the first driver to sweep both races. That also made him the first three-time winner at the 11/2-mile high-banked track.
Even without winning a pole in Texas, Roush Fenway has won seven of the 16 Cup races at the track where no other team has won more than twice. Roush has 34 top-10 finishes in 76 starts, and all five drivers finished in the top 11 in November.
David Reutimann claimed the pole for today’s Samsung 500 in his No. 00 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing. Series points leader Jeff Gordon will start second at one of the two active tracks where the four-time Cup driver for Hendrick never has won a race.
Kenseth and teammate David Ragan make up the second row. Edwards and Greg Biffle also share a row, starting 13th and 14th, and Jamie McMurray, the other Roush driver, qualified 36th.
Since winning the first two races, Kenseth hasn’t led a lap. His bid for three victories in a row was done seven laps into the race at Las Vegas.
"It has been really a miserable four weeks," Kenseth said. "The first two weeks couldn’t have been any better, and the last four couldn’t have been really much worse. So we definitely need a good finish here, hopefully get things rolling in the right direction."
That goes for the entire team, especially after two consecutive races on tight half-mile tracks. Roush drivers had an average finish of 30th at Bristol, and McMurray’s 10th at Martinsville was the only one better than 23rd.
Before the short tracks, Edwards was third at Atlanta — another Bruton Smith-owned track with a similar layout where he also has won three times. That is Edwards’ best finish this season after winning a Cup-high nine times last year and the best for a Roush driver since Daytona and California to open the season.
"We are the same team; I’m the same driver. Everything’s fine," Edwards said. "Literally, we could win here and win the next 10 in a row. Or we could run second the next 10, the difference could be 6 inches in each race. … It’s been six races since we won. I don’t think we’re in any sort of trouble."
Still, Edwards feels "hugely fortunate" to be eighth in season points and the highest-ranked Roush driver. He finished 17th at Las Vegas despite a blown engine and got caught up in a wreck at Daytona.
"It could have been way worse," Edwards said. "I’m OK with where we’re at. I’m OK with how we’ve performed."
After holding off Jimmie Johnson by four-tenths of a second to win at Texas last spring, Edwards posted an eight-second victory over Gordon in November.
Kenseth and Biffle have Cup wins at Texas, where the Roush dominance began with former team members Jeff Burton and Mark Martin winning the first two races after the track opened in 1997.
"Jeff Burton and Mark Martin, they can win anywhere, and really they’re the ones that really should have all the credit for us even running good still today," Kenseth said.
Burton, who won the inaugural Texas race, became the track’s first two-time winner two years ago when he was driving for Richard Childress.
"The mile-and-a-halves have been a strong point for the Roush teams, no question about that," Burton said. "Some of it is a plan, and some of it is luck."
Reutimann has made quite a rise for the Waltrip team, so much in fact that he lightheartedly has been referred to as "The Franchise."
Already this season, Reuti-mann has his best career finish (fourth at Las Vegas), three top 10s — one short of his career total in 63 races before this year — and is 11th in season points.
"I feel like, don’t enjoy it too much, because it can go the other way really quickly," Reutimann said. "You want to sit back and look around and enjoy it a little bit because you know how hard it is to do.
"At the same time, my mentality is I can’t do that because something else could go wrong."
