Following finishes outside of the top 20 in the first five events of the season, Roush Fenway Racing went to work building new, faster cars. Those cars were debuted on Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway and while they were better, the results were still poor. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. would finish best of the three drivers in the 15th spot, with Greg Biffle finishing 17th and Trevor Bayne in 18th.
Stenhouse commented post-race that he felt they ran better all night than where they finished. Notably, the sophomore driver did briefly crack the top-15 mid-race.
“Obviously, I sped on pit road there and cost us a lap, and then we were just fighting back from way behind,” he said. “The cautions fell our way and we got some good breaks towards the end and made some better adjustments, and was able to salvage a 15th, so that was good.”
Bayne felt that he also improved as well and if he was able to practice during the second round, he feels he could’ve been in the top-15.
“The whole race we managed to basically stay on the lead lap,” he commented. “We got the lucky dog twice fortunately, but we never had to take the wavearound or do anything like that. I felt like it was one of our better mile-and-a-half races we’ve had in a while. We finished 18th, but we were a couple adjustments away from being a top-15 car. To have the 17, the 16 and myself all in the top 18 I think the scoreboard shows it was an improvement in itself. Our qualifying effort was better this weekend. Obviously, we’re not gonna jump to the top of that pole in one weekend, so it’s gonna be small things. Honestly, I didn’t expect to see this big of a gain out of it, so I think it’s good.”
Despite only one finish inside of the top-15, the group is optimistic about their chances moving forward as Stenhouse said that they’ve found speed, but still have work to do.
“We’ve got to get the handling a little bit better,” he expressed. “I think we missed it there, but there’s still more speed we need to bring in these race cars, but I think we’ve got a step in the right direction.”
Bayne added that the slightly positive run gives them some momentum and shows the guys in the shop that the work that they’re doing is paying off.
“We need that, so it’s really good for us,” he added. “AdvoCare was here this weekend, so they got to hang out with us and we had a decent run, so we’ll take it and work with it. Obviously, 18th isn’t where we want to be at this point in the season, but for where we’ve been it’s an improvement and we’ll keep getting better.”
They have started on the path back to what they were a few years ago, possibly. Time will tell.