Dearborn, Mich. — It’s an oft-used saying, but in the case of the Roush-Yates Ford engine alliance it’s truly appropriate—two heads are indeed better than one.
In the year-and-a-half since Jack Roush and Robert Yates merged their engine departments, Ford Racing has realized significant benefits on and off the track. The new venture played a key role in Kurt Busch winning the 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series championship and has helped Ford to a series-best eight wins so far in 2005 (as of July 1).
While producing engines for eight full-time Ford Nextel Cup teams on a weekly basis, Roush-Yates engines have already established a reputation for power and reliability. Mose Nowland, a Ford Racing engine expert who has been with Ford for 50 years, feels that combining the engine efforts of Ford’s two top teams made things easier for everyone involved.
“When you talk about the difference of before and now, the Roush-Yates thing is just a tremendous advancement for the Ford community, and the reason being is that you can work so much easier together. There was internal competition, and for us designing parts and trying to provide them parts, we were the man in the middle,” said Nowland. “Now that they're married together today, and have taken the specialists from Mooresville [N.C.] and Livonia [Mich.] and blended them together, we've got one terrific advantage over our competition. It's the greatest thing I've ever seen happen.”
For the men in the trenches who work directly with the teams, they’ve found the operation an advantage as well. Fierce competition has now turned into friendly cooperation.
“It’s the best thing that we’ve ever done as far as engine development. There are all kinds of reasons why that is, but looking at it now, the more you do something the better you get,” said Roush-Yates head engine builder, Doug Yates. “When you only do engines for one or two teams, it’s hard to be the best you can because you only have that many opportunities each race. I’ve always felt that if you put yourself in situations where you’re presented with more opportunities to win, and have your engines in good cars, you’re going learn a lot and you’re going to learn really fast. So from that side of it, it’s been great.
“To work with Robert and Jack has been really neat because they’re two different guys with two different approaches, but when you blend the two of them together you’ve got something pretty awesome.”
Besides reliable power on a weekly basis, the alliance has also helped teams in other areas, such as zeroing in on possible trouble spots.
“Everybody knows that all the stuff in our eight cars is the same, whether it’s Jack’s or Robert’s or the Wood Brothers,” said Ford engine liaison Mike Messick, who works with the teams at-track each week. “The handling stuff is up to whatever the crew chiefs decide, but if somebody is getting beat then they say, ‘Well, maybe we need to go work on this.’ It kind of helps all the teams get better because we have one thing that we provide to them that is a standard. ‘This is the Ford engine you get. They’re all the same.’ Then they’ll figure out what to work on from there, but if you don’t have that standard, you sit there and point fingers all the time.”
With the final 10-race chase for the Nextel Cup approaching in September, the only pointing those working at Roush-Yates hope to be doing is from Victory Lane.
