Mike Mulhern

At Daytona It’s Chevy-versus-Toyota…and Where are the Fords?

Ford’s Carl Edwards and car owner Jack Roush need more speed
(Photo credit: Autostock)

By Mike Mulhern

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
Ford teams have been conspicuously absent from all the Speedweeks hoopla so far.
Maybe Jack Roush’s guys and Doug Yates’ guys are sandbagging, and not showing all they’ve got.
But so far it doesn’t look like Ford is bringing much to the Daytona 500 table.
Ford racing bosses two weeks ago said they were looking ahead to Cup tour stops in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and Matt Kenseth and the other Roush drivers may indeed shine there. Kenseth is a good pick at California Speedway for sure.
But Daytona is the biggest race of the season, and Chevrolet teams have won 15 of the last 19 500s. And the past few days the show has been Chevrolet-versus-Toyota….or more precisely Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolets versus the Joe Gibbs and Michael Waltrip Toyotas.
If Ford teams are playing the rope-a-dope, they might not show much in Thursday’s 150-milers either.
Has Ford simply given up on this year’s Daytona?
Well, in Saturday night’s Shootout Carl Edwards had the best finishing Ford, and he was only 12th. In fact Edwards had the only Ford running at the finish.
And in Sunday qualifying Edwards was stunningly slow: “I was looking to put it on the pole, but I guess we’re going to need a bigger pole,” he quipped after posting only the 36th fastest lap.
“But it’s really about the race setup for next Sunday. We’d like to be faster, but I’m ready to go racing.”
David Gilliland, the Yates man who was on the 500 pole here last year, crashed out of the Shootout, and so did Greg Biffle, Jamie McMurray and Bill Elliott.
Travis Kvapil, Gilliland’s new teammate, taking Ricky Rudd’s spot in the Yates lineup, had the fastest Ford Sunday, seventh. Kvapil and Yates are still looking for a full-time sponsor for that team, and they need to show something here.

Travis Kvapil showed the quickest Ford in Daytona 500 qualifying
(Photo credit: Autostock)

Boris Said, the part-timer who has to make the 500 field on speed, had the fastest Roush car, ninth. Said is one of the Roush benchmarks here in speed (and the July pole winner in 2006, finishing fourth in that 400): “Doug Yates has done a great job with the motors…and that’s all we can expect, with how fast the Toyotas are. There’s no competing with them right now.”

Ford’s Boris Said
(Photo credit: Autostock)

Now speed may not be what wins this Daytona 500, considering how wild and ungainly these new winged cars are out there on the track, and how iffy the tires and chassis setups. Luck may be the bigger factor. And good track position – ahead of the many expected wrecks – may be the key to good luck, so look for some pit stop gambles. But if the tire blistering problems don’t improve, then crew chiefs may be calling their drivers to the pits for fresh rubber sooner than for more fuel.
Roush’s Matt Kenseth, who didn’t win a pole last year so had to sit out the Shootout, says he’s just “real happy” to be in the top-15 in speed here. His view of the Shootout: “That most of our cars look pretty slow.  We’ve got some work to do to run with those other guys.”
On the other hand, Elliott, in Eddie Wood’s Ford, is in a jam. He has lost two Daytona cars already, the first Friday night when he got caught up in a crash, the second in the Shootout when he blew a tire and hit the wall. So he didn’t have many laps on the car he’s got for the 500.  “I’m totally confused,” Elliott says in frustration. “But it’s just par for the kind of week we’ve had.”
Kvapil, on his second time around as a Cup driver, has one thing going for him, maybe: number 28 on the sides of his Fords. That’s a legendary number, going back to the days of ‘Golden Boy’ Fred Lorenzen.
Kvapil and teammate Gilliland, like everyone else here, has all-new cars this season…and naturally an early-season shortage, as tough as it is to get these cars inspected (they have to go individually to NASCAR’s Concord tech center for special certification, and after every major crash too). Plus Yates has moved into new shops, at the Roush compound in Concord.
Kvapil wasn’t in the Shootout, so he’ll get his first good look at how his 500 car handles in the draft Wednesday. And he’s a bit worried: “I’ve talked to a lot of drivers, and they didn’t have a lot of good things to say about how they drove.”
Gilliland too is banking on handling more than speed: “In testing this was our best-driving car, so we brought it back for the 500. We didn’t quite have the speed we were looking for in testing, but we made some improvements and definitely picked up.
“Handling, more than ever, is going to be a big part of this race. The Daytona 500 is going to be extra long if your car is ill-handling.”
One of the bigger Ford surprises is Biffle, who finished 2007 so strong and who has been quite optimistic about what he and crew chief Greg Erwin have for this year. Biffle has so far been a no-show on the track. He insists he feels good about Thursday’s 150s, though. Perhaps because with these cars it’s more in the driver’s hands than before.
“The racing is a lot different,” Biffle says. “You would think a bigger car (like this one) would suck up faster or better (in the draft)…and it does to a point. But then it stalls out real fast. 
“The other car would have momentum (to complete the pass). With this car the engine is turning so many RPM that when you do get a draft, the car won’t carry that speed. It slows down instantly.”
Typically here crew chiefs will have the option of picking a rear-end gear that either runs well in the draft (with not too many RPM) or that has more punch for passing (with more RPM). But this year NASCAR has mandated rear-end gears that limit teams. Not only that, but teams are worried about blown engines and power bands, because of the excessive RPM.
But then that’s another part of the game that is now back in the driver’s hands.
“It seems it’s harder to get the pass done,” Biffle says. “You get that little bit of a run, but the run dies off before you get a chance to do anything. 
“A guy will get a huge run behind you, when you look in the mirror, and he’ll go to the bottom and get two cars ahead of you…then all of a sudden you come up and go back by him.
“Speed just bleeds off so fast.”
Biffle, one of the hardest chargers on the tour, and a Daytona winner, echoes complaints from many drivers that this new car has such a stiff chassis-and-spring design (mandated by NASCAR) that the ride is very harsh – and very hard on the tires. “My car bounced a lot and didn’t drive very good in the Shootout,” Biffle says. “We’re going back to something that drives a little better and is a little easier on the tire.”
Jamie McMurray, who did run well in the Shootout till tangling with Denny Hamlin, will have a ways to go in the 150s to get up near the front, “but I’m still optimistic,” he says. “Carl and I were a little off in qualifying, but in the Shootout our cars were pretty fast in the draft.”