By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—With more resources being allocated to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series program, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. hopes the 2019 season is a turning point for Roush-Fenway Racing.
On Jan. 2, the organization announced the NASCAR Xfinity Series program, a program that has been in operation since 1993, ceased operations. With that program no longer in existence, RFR allocated those resources to turn the ship around in 2019 for their Cup program.
“This offseason, we kind of last minute decided what direction we wanted to go with some of our parts, pieces and chassis,” Stenhouse said. “It has been nice to see them be able to wait until last minute and get the job done of what we need in the race cars and get them built before Atlanta.”
According to Stenhouse, the problem for his No. 17 team is starting a new season where it should be but falling into a lull by the middle of the season to only pick it up at the end of the season.
“It seems like for us that we generally start the season kind of where we want to, but we never really build on that,” he said. “We fall into a lull in the middle of the season.
“By the time we get to the end of the season, we tend to put lot of pressure on ourselves and work really hard to get our speed back to where we started the year. We really have to continue a good progress throughout the whole season. That is what we are looking to do. I think having only two Cup cars will allow us to do that.”
How does the No. 17 team get out the midseason lull? The idea is to push the engineers and everyone involved to continue developing.
With Ryan Neman joining the organization with an engineering background, he believes they will be able to do that.
In 2018, Matt Kenseth returned to the organization to help turn the ship around. Stenhouse is appreciative of the work Kenseth did pointing out the weaknesses within the organization but recognized that he was not in it for the long term.
“I feel like Matt did a really good job of pointing out of all the weaknesses,” he said. “Matt and I got along, but Ryan is in this thing for the long haul. He is really looking forward to helping us continue to turn the ship around. He has a lot of knowledge. He is smart.”
Stenhouse could start by not running into every car on the track except the pace car. Made a fool of himself last year.