Deja vu for Ford as it searches for Cup series victories

Mark Rushbrook has been in this position before, last August when he expressed that Ford’s results were unacceptable.

Unfortunately for the global director of Ford Performance, it’s the same sentiment as the Cup Series hits Memorial Day weekend and looks ahead to a busy summer. Ford has one Cup Series win in 13 races so far this season, with Joey Logano in March at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

More NASCAR!

Rhodes motors to first Truck Series win of 2023 at Charlotte

Mosack fired up for ARCA/Xfinity double duty on home ground at Charlotte

Bell 'disappointed' in first part of his NASCAR season

“It’s been a tough year, for sure,” Rushbrook said earlier this week as Ford unveiled a new exhibit at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Ford drivers haven’t shied away from the struggle on intermediate tracks, particularly against counterparts Chevrolet and Toyota. Logano acknowledged the issue as early as Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the season’s third race.

Kevin Harvick said earlier this month it’s like going to a knife fight with no knife. In his final season, Harvick is a bright spot for Ford at third in the championship standings through the gritty consistency known from his No. 4 team with six top-10 finishes.

“I think for us, our car’s been pretty good, but obviously, we’re at a huge deficit,” Harvick said. “The aerodynamics of the car are just way off compared to the other two manufacturers. … The bigger the racetrack, the harder it is.”

All three manufacturers were given a chance to change the hood and noses of their cars after learnings from the first year of the Next Gen car. Most of the changes came around the cooling elements of the vehicle with the size of the hood vents.

“At this point in the season, we want to have more than one win, but we’ve also had a lot of really strong performances: Daytona, Talladega, Phoenix, Martinsville,” said Rushbrook. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to close it, and you go to get the win. So, we’re not happy with that. But we know we can be competitive on those tracks.

“Where we see opportunity for improvement is on the intermediate tracks. That’s where our approach is working with the three big teams – if you count Penske, Wood Brothers as one and Stewart-Haas and RFK, and also with Front Row now.”

The box Next Gen puts teams and manufacturers in is tight, so Rushbrook acknowledged the field is much closer together. In actuality, he said the three manufacturers are not that far apart from each other aerodynamically.

“But they are different,” he said. “But the cars in total, because of what Next Gen has done bringing everything together, even those small differences end up on a long green-flag run separating the cars. So, it’s finding out the fine-tuning knobs that we have, but it’s also – we talked about the front end of the car and the aerodynamics – there is more to it than that.

Logano’s win at Atlanta is a high point on Ford’s otherwise difficult season. Rusty Jarrett/Motorsport

“The chassis is very sensitive in the setup, so ride heights are very important. That has nothing to do with the front end itself. But where can you get the car for the ride heights and the travels? That’s where we think a lot of the opportunity for us to make improvements is. It’s not in the front of the car, it’s in the car itself.”

And that’s where the deja vu comes in for Rushbrook. Last August, Rushbrook expressed the same concerns as Ford sat on four wins. But things turned around after those comments, and Ford won the series championship with Joey Logano.

The good news is that what Ford needs to do can happen during the season to help its teams improve over time.

“Absolutely,” Rushbrook said. “We’ve got the right people inside of Ford, and we’ve got the right teams and the right engine partner. We know how to do it. We did it last year. We’ve done it before. We need to keep working.”

There are three Ford drivers in the top 10 in the championship standings. Harvick is third, with Ryan Blaney sitting seventh and Brad Keselowski eighth. Rushbrook praised the work RFK Racing is doing to chip away at where they need to be and the confidence the organization is building.

Of the 14 Ford drivers in the Cup Series, only four have led more than 100 laps to date. In total, Ford drivers have combined to lead 856 laps.

Logano’s lone win is the blemish on the Ford record, and there is more work to be done, as all admit. But Rushbrook also sees plenty of good within the manufacturer.

“What we saw at Daytona to start the season, there were a lot of strong Fords there,” he said. “Had that accident played out a little bit different – a little bit earlier or later, the yellow getting thrown a little bit earlier or later – we would have walked away with a Daytona 500 win. Doug [Yates] loves superspeedways and the engine package, and he always brings great engines to the superspeedways and the aero package and the teamwork. So that was hard to leave Daytona. I don’t know if it’s harder when you perform so well and don’t get the win.

“Then two or three weeks later at Phoenix, the Hendrick cars looked strong early, but on the long run, especially the Stewart-Haas cars and Kevin, he was out to a four or five-second lead, and a poorly timed caution took that away.

“So again, kudos to the short track package that our teams have, especially Stewart-Haas being really good. Another short track, Martinsville, Ryan Preece led every single lap of the first stage. Little pit road incident. But that’s racing. You have to execute on all levels.

“There are so many positive things there. Yeah, do we want to be better on intermediate tracks? Yes. But there’s a lot of positives there, and there are more wins to come out of these teams.”

Story originally appeared on Racer