On the surface, three top-15 finishes at Darlington for the four-car Roush Fenway Racing team doesn’t seem so bad.
Roush Fenway Racing’s Recent Struggles Continue
But the Roush Fords struggled all night and were fortunate to have Matt Kenseth (13th), David Ragan (14th) and Carl Edwards (15th) get respectable finishes. Greg Biffle was 22nd after hitting the fence.
“We just weren’t very fast and we didn’t handle very well as a group,” Kenseth said. “Even when we got it balanced, we just don’t have speed and I don’t really know why. It was just a struggle. I’m actually super happy to come home 13th. That was probably way better than we should have finished.”
The story was similar for Ragan, who went a couple laps down early in the race but said “the good Lord was looking after us” and allowed the No. 6 car to catch some lucky breaks.
A pit call to stay out helped his cause and the team got a timely caution.
"We caught a caution, got the wave-around and then got a lucky dog," he said. "We had to race all night and there's no doubt it was the toughest 14th-place finish I've ever had."
The Roush cars in general haven’t had a good stretch lately.
Despite being 11th in points, Edwards has been inconsistent and has only led two laps all season. Ragan has one top-10 all year. Biffle (seventh in points) had seven top-10 finishes in the first eight races but has none since.
And Kenseth (fifth) started the season with six top-10s in the first seven races but, like Biffle, has hit a cold streak.
“The last month has been really hard for whatever reason,” Kenseth said. “We show up at the track and we’re slower than we were a couple months before that. It’s just been a battle lately.
“It’s been a lot harder than the first two months of the season. We’ve got to figure out how to get our cars running a little faster and that makes the rest of it easier.”
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