2015 Reviews: Roush Fenway Racing
Welcome to our 2015 reviews. Instead of going driver-by-driver we’re going to review teams this year. We’re starting from the bottom of the standings and working our way up. It’s Roush Fenway time.
Drivers (standings in parenthesis): Greg Biffle (20th), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (25th), Trevor Bayne (29th)
Highlights: Biffle led the team with three top-five finishes and four top 10s. Stenhouse Jr. had one top five and three top 10s while Bayne had two top 10s.
Biffle’s best finish came at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600, where he finished second to Carl Edwards. He also finished fifth at Pocono in August and fourth at New Hampshire in the fall.
Stenhouse Jr.’s best finish was at Bristol in the spring where he was fourth. Bayne, the straggler of the group, finished ninth at Michigan and Daytona in the summer.
Lowlights: While Biffle had those three top-10 finishes, they were products of strategy plays and not outright speed. The 600 was a race decided on pit strategy. Edwards won because he was stretching his fuel. And Biffle did the same at New Hampshire in the fall.
Bayne and Stenhouse each had 11 finishes of 30th or worse. Consistency wasn’t a strong point. Stenhouse had two stretches with three-straight races of finishes of 34th or worse. Bayne had back-to-back 40th-place finishes at Indianapolis and Pocono.
Overview: We are left to wonder more if this is the beginning of the new normal for Roush Fenway Racing rather than if the team will bounce back. Performance has deteriorated in recent memory as drivers like Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards have left the team. Their departures aren’t a coincidence when it relates to the lack of speed, is it?
Biffle was head-and-shoulders above his two teammates in 2015, though he was still playing catchup to the rest of the field. Stenhouse showed flashes that he could hang with Biffle at times but didn’t keep it up.
The team will have an alliance with Front Row Motorsports in 2016, though FRM wasn’t too far behind Roush at times in 2015. Will the alliance benefit both parties? Roush certainly hopes so. When you look at the standings, it was the No. 3 Ford team behind Team Penske and Richard Petty Motorsports, which gets equipment from Roush.
Previous Reviews: JTG-Daugherty Racing and Germain Racing, HScott Motorsports, Front Row Motorsports, BK Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
