Wednesday, August 4, 2010

With FR9 issues ironed out, may still be hope for Ford this season


Well, Ford finally did it. The manufacturer finally broke into the NASCAR win column in 2010 with Greg Biffle's win at Pocono on Sunday. Actually, Ford did already have a couple of Nationwide wins -- turned in by Carl Edwards -- prior to last weekend's action at Pocono Raceway. But before last weekend, the Blue Oval group had gone well past the halfway point of the 2010 race season without a win at NASCAR's top level -- the Sprint Cup Series.

Since the last part of the 2009 season, Ford NASCAR teams had been gradually transitioning to the new FR9 engine, and the transition has been a rocky one, to say the least. Kasey Kahne did pilot an FR9-powered Ford to a win in one of the Gatorade Duels in Daytona back in February, but Sunday's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono was the first points-paying win for the new engine.

Now that the transition to this new engine is complete, will Ford get back to its winning ways? The winless drought was a long one -- maybe not by single driver or team standars, but definitely for a specific manufacturer's entire camp. The drought began right after Jamie McMurray claimed his final win for Roush Fenway Racing at Talladega Superspeedway on Nov. 1, 2009 and stretched through to the July 25 win, also by McMurray (this time around in a Chevrolet), in the Brickyard 400 on July 25.

To read more, visit AutoRacingDaily.com.

Photo of Greg Biffle's No. 16 Ford courtesy of NASCAR Media.

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