Roush Fords riding wave of early success

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With Monday's win in the Auto Club 500, car owner Jack Roush has now won twice since NASCAR rival Rick Hendrick's last Cup win.Now, that's not much of a trend, but if a Roush driver can beat Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson next Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- where Johnson will be going for his fourth straight win at that track -- then that might well make it one.Roush is taking vigorous exception to those who had written him off at Daytona."At Daytona we certainly had equal cars to what the Hendrick guys had -- which may have been a big surprise to everyone but me and my guys," Roush said. "And we had better cars than the Childress cars."But the cars that had us challenged, from a car-speed point of view, were the Joe Gibbs (Toyotas). Whether they had received some consideration or simply worked harder and done a better job, I'm not sure. But you can't make a case that they were able to race better because their engines were better, because the engines were close enough that it shouldn't have made any difference."If Toyota's edge at Daytona wasn't really under the hood, then where was it? Certainly not in aerodynamics, since the body rules for NASCAR's new car make every manufacturer's body essentially identical.And then, what to make of the sprint by Roush's Carl Edwards away from Hendrick's Johnson and Jeff Gordon and Gibbs' Kyle Busch on Monday?Gordon and Busch said that they were surprised at Edwards' power. So perhaps Roush is justified in saying that anyone writing off his Ford operation this season, in favor of Toyota teams or Chevy teams or Dodge teams, does so at his own risk."I've had the honor and privilege in being, more than two decades now in NASCAR racing, and a couple of decades preceding that in drag racing and road racing," Roush said. "I've had the honor and privilege to be in the company of really good racers...."And I've never been around better people than I am today."Bob Osborne (who runs Edward's operation) is a fantastic engineer. He prepared himself for a professional life in many fields. He happened to decide he wanted to be a racer for the time being. In addition to being a racer, he provides a lot of leadership in the engineering application, which is so much a part of what we do today."Robbie Reiser (Matt Kenseth's crew chief, now heading Roush's technical side) is doing a great job in the shop. We're surrounded by great drivers. Carl is approaching the top of his game, and we'll be able to keep him up there for a long time...."I've really got to screw up bad to mess it up for these guys.... We're going to have a great year ... and Carl is going to be in the front of it."Are Ford's engines competitive with Toyota's?That question sparked an angry response from Roush:"In 1993 Bill France did the engine that was going to be the engine of the future for everyone," Roush said. "Chevy went along with that for a couple of years, and then they did the SB2. The rumor is they do a new engine every year and hope they'll get something out of it. And NASCAR gave them that new engine -- and Ford kept the same engine."Then Dodge came on the scene and took that Chevy engine to the next level. AndNASCAR approved that, even though it was a departure from conventional technology, with a much more complex cooling system. And it was a markedly better engine than the Ford. And Ford still didn't do another engine."Toyota came along, and NASCAR told them they could do anything anyone else was doing. So they took the best features of the Dodge and Chevrolet engines and added some new things. And NASCAR approved that."If you're counting, Ford is now four iterations behind, from a casting and technology point of view.... Robert and Doug Yates have done a wonderful job of taking an engine that is relatively antique and getting fairly competitive horsepower out of it."Roush said that his shop is working on new engines that he hopes will be available by midseason."We do have two new engines on the drawing board: one is along the lines of the new cylinder-head layout of the Toyota, and the other is along the lines of the new Chevrolet engine," Roush said.(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)