NASCAR at Talladega recap: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. leads Roush Fenway Racing back to victory lane

He was a can’t-miss prospect, a surefire future superstar who soon would taste success at NASCAR’s highest rung and leave his mark.

That was the near universal thinking when Roush Fenway Racing promoted Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in 2013 to replace the departing Matt Kenseth, who, feeling he needed a change of scenery to spark his career during its latter stage, jumped at the chance to join Joe Gibbs Racing.

Losing Kenseth, a top-tier racer who delivered team owner Jack Roush his first Cup Series championship in 2003, obviously stung. But Kenseth’s defection also presented Roush an avenue to elevate Stenhouse, which would help lessen the impact. And in the long-term, the organization would be better off. The then-25-year-old coming off successive Xfinity titles in 2011-12 would obviously endure some growing pains, but given some time he would become the driver to carry Roush into the future.

Sine making the transition to Cup, however, Stenhouse has largely underwhelmed. Too often he overdrove the cars, seemingly lacking the patience needed to be a winning driver. More than one competitor has remarked over the years that the former sprint car standout couldn’t acclimate to significantly longer races where conserving one’s equipment and tires is paramount.

Few thought it would take Stenhouse 158 races to get his breakthrough first-career cup win. But that was the reality before Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, when a nifty pass of Kyle Busch on the white flag lap sent Stenhouse surging into a lead he wouldn’t relinquish.

Before Sunday, the most identifiable thing about Stenhouse had nothing to do with his ability on the track. Being the boyfriend of megawatt personality and fellow competitor Danica Patrick was how most recognized Stenhouse, who had never accumulated more than six top-10 finishes in a season and whose best year-end points ranking was a rather ordinary 19th.

But Stenhouse’s struggles weren’t solely because of his own shortcomings. Roush had devolved into a different team than the one from a decade before had regularly challenged Hendrick Motorsports as NASCAR’s superior group. Coinciding with the trips to the winner’s circle becoming fewer and fewer, the sponsorship dollars no longer flowed in like it once did. And in a sport where money equals speed, and speed begets money, Roush found itself in a precarious Catch-22.

An organizational overhaul commenced during this past offseason. Gone was longtime driver Greg Biffle so that Roush could downsize to two full-time teams and direct additional resources towards Stenhouse and Trevor Bayne, several behind-the-scenes roles were restructured, and additional personnel brought in.

“It’s well-documented some of the transition that we’ve gone through in the last few years,” Roush president Steve Newmark said. “I think everybody recognizes there’s ebb-and-flow in sports, and one of the things that Jack has always said is that you don’t dig out of that just by happenstance, you’ve got to put the effort into it.”

“Ricky has had ample opportunity to mail it in, yet he’s at the shop at 6:30 a.m. working with the guys on occasion, and he has really taken that leadership mantle.”

Thus far, through 10 races the results indicate Roush is at least on the path to recapturing its past glory, which includes consecutive Cup championships (2003-2004), and filling out half of the 10-driver playoff field in 2005. Stenhouse not only has a win and four other top-10 finishes — just one shy of career-high — Bayne sits 16th in points and provisionally holds the final playoff spot.

It’s far too early to tell whether Stenhouse will fully develop into the driver many thought he would become, or if Roush is truly in the midst of a renaissance. Those answers will play out over the remaining 26 races, with the truest indicator coming on the intermediate-sized tracks that make up the bulk of the schedule and where the organization has notably underperformed in recent years.

But that dissection will come later. Until then, driver and team can relish in an accomplishment they wondered if it would ever happen.

“You get to a point over the last couple years, I probably thought that,” Stenhouse said. “The start of this season, I had a different mindset that let’s continue to build on what we learned at the end of last year, and let’s try and get a win before the season is up.

“I’ve felt like the way our cars have performed and the way they’ve driven, I’ve felt like we could get something in victory lane before the season was up. I’m glad it’s sooner rather than later.”