As Ford cruises along, leader thrilled
Ford Performance director Dave Pericak can hardly settle on what part of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule has pleased him most after 10 races.
Watching his teams combine to win half the races — three by Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski (two) and Joey Logano — is certainly a good candidate and a good start to a season he acknowledges remains in the early stages. Integrating Stewart-Haas Racing into the collective and winning the Daytona 500 with Kurt Busch ranks high.
But Ricky Stenhouse Jr. claiming his first Cup victory at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend to return former powerhouse Roush Fenway Racing to victory lane for the first time since 2014 strikes a chord com-
petitively and sentimentally.
USA TODAY Sports spoke with Pericak ahead of this weekend’s Go Bowling 400 at Kansas Speedway about performance, penalties and making magic:
Q: Care to brag about the start of the season?
A: It’s been a good start to the season. We have a significant number of races ahead of us. We reorganized ourselves, and we focused on winning. And bringing in Stewart-Haas was significant, and a lot of people questioned me along the way, whether we were really going to fix Roush Fenway. And I wouldn’t say the job is done, but I would say if you look at the performance this year, and clearly with the victory last weekend, we are well on our way to fixing Roush Fenway, which has always been the plan. A: That’s where the magic is. Each race team is a race team. They want to be the one that crossed the finish line first. But I think what our role is at Ford Performance, we have to keep certain things completely unique to the team, and they know they have the trust in us that that will occur. But there’s things we’ve found where it just makes a lot of sense where each team was spending effort and it makes no sense to have four or five individual efforts going on when we can have one collaborative effort.
A: Uhh, I would say that I love Brad, but I’ve probably said enough.
Q: So is he right?
A: I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, but you probably got enough from me on that.
Q: Why the high-profile penalties to Ford’s Keselowski, Logano and Aric Almirola?
A: I think every team in the garage is trying to work on that laser edge. That’s where the sport is at. I know that we are not doing anything intentionally that’s wrong. That’s not how we work, but when you do work in the edge like that … have you seen the tol- erances we’ve been hit for? One thirty-second of an inch (for Logano)? When you think about it, these cars get into a wreck, we go tape them up and fix them and slap them back together and super glue, and, next thing you know, they’re out running again at the front, yet we get penalized for a 1⁄ violation. So it’s not an 32 intention to do anything out of the rule book. It’s to live in the rule book, and you can argue if it happens in the race or not. Look, I know NASCAR is doing what they need to do. They’re policing it and keeping everyone honest.
Q: How big a deal is it for the company to have Roush Fenway looking better?
A: It’s a huge deal for us. We reorganized that team, got them on the same path as everyone else, leveraged all the tools and all the support they’re getting from Ford, and then to have them get to the point where they are this year, which is the cars are fast, there has been a progression already through the first 10 races of the finishes and where they’re finishing. So, yeah, it’s huge, because it’s another proof point that the system that we have put in place here at Ford and Ford Performance is effective.
When I took this job, I looked Jack Roush in the face and told him, “We are going to put you back in victory lane.” Now, I wanted to do it last season, and we struggled a bit, but it has now happened.