Ford Race Fans:

This is normally where you would see an Ask Brian segment, but since we have received numerous questions about NASCAR Sprint Cup and our performance, that I thought I’d give you a personal update.

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First off, we’re not pleased with our performance to date. Certainly, winning the first two races of the year raised expectations for all of us, but a combination of a batch of bad valve train parts (note Kenseth’s engine failure at Las Vegas and a couple other engine issues) and bad luck (Carl Edwards crash at Talladega and some pit stop miscues), really have kept us out of the winner’s circle for far too long.

Outside of those factors, we also haven’t been able to quite get a handle on the vehicle dynamics of this year’s car, at least not as well as some of the other teams including Hendrick have to date. Our engineers, along with the team engineers, have been working diligently, and we saw some positive signs at Indianapolis last weekend.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned engine horsepower yet.

That’s because we believe our current engine package is still competitive, both in terms of horsepower and fuel economy.

The new FR9 engine—which so many of you have been asking about—is almost ready, but we are still going to go to a slow rollout of it to ensure reliability, and to see how it effects the current cars since the engine mounting is different. Last week, we released a little video preview of it, which I hope you have downloaded it to watch.

There’s been lots of on-going testing of the FR9, both on track and on the dyno, but—as we said at the beginning of the year—we weren’t going to rush it because the current engine is still competitive and reliable.

Still, we believe in-race development of the engine is important, so expect to see it soon.

We’re still very confident we’ll have three, championship-capable Fusions in the Chase to the Championship starting in September. And, like last year, we expect to make a run for the title in those final 10 races.

For now, I want to thank all of you who continue to ask questions, and hope this helps answer most of them.

I personally want to thank you for your support of all the Ford Racing teams, and hope you continue to stick with Ford Motor Company as we continue our turnaround.

Sincerely,

Brian Wolfe
Director, North America Motorsports