Written by Bram Hume
Courtesy of Backstretch Motorsports
Originally published 3/29/08
Link to original post

In American auto racing, both in the business of racing and the science of racing, there are only a handful of names you can call on for understanding.

To my way of thinking, among the best of the best, there is Roger Penske, Doug Fehan of Corvette Racing, Dave Maraj of Audi Sport North America, Les Unger of Toyota Motorsports and Jack Roush, to name a few.

From these individuals, if you have the privilege of getting time to talk with them, you can learn everything from the upper-most advances in tech, marketing and performance to the street-level gut instincts of competitive motorsports.

And no one better represents these attributes more than Jack Roush.

Jack Roush is a gifted engineer. Jack Roush goes the extra mile to surround himself with talented, like-minded people.
Jack Roush understands what it takes to be successful.

Roush Industries is a plethora of companies dedicated to everything from track performance to street car safety enhancements.

Look Roush Industries up on the internet. Here's a link for you: http://www.roushind.com/

After working around Jack Roush and spending time with his teams and drivers, (it seems it was last century when I was there) I learned important lessons about Mr. Roush.

Never has there been a more driven individual... success is everything, even when that success is measured as small steps.

Jack Roush actually shuns the spotlight. It's not a zone of comfort for the man.

But he will take a stand on what he believes in.

Mr. Roush believes in fairness and works within the rules. He does take the competitive advantage whenever and wherever he is allowed to.

Let me interject here that performance in racing is measured in hundredths or thousandths of a second gained by taking the next level of on-track success to heart.

`Rubbin' on it the most", thinking the most of it, thinking about it the most and acting on those thoughts as theory to completed part or otherwise enhanced performance scenario is the key.

Like the Roush design of the front anti-roll swaybar. A tool designed to help the front end geometry of the new car and possibly get it to turn better by adding stability and reducing weight, in essence, giving the new car more nose, something it sorely lacks in the area of balance.

Handling equals the ability to utilize horsepower to its fullest potential. There's the realizing of the hundredths of a second gained.

Enough of that realization is the stuff that wins races.

As Jack himself described it, it is a part that that Roush Fenway Racing and Roush Industrial engineers designed.
"(We) optimized the torsional effect of it with minimizing the weight of it through heat treating and material selection and the way the components were machined and the way it was assembled."

Pure performance enhancement. And apparently, it worked as it was designed to work.

Roush himself has said in the past that his teams were far behind in the development of the new car from last year. He felt he was working within the rules when he didn't take advantage of "non-authorized" testing at non NASCAR sanctioned tracks. By his own admission, RFR was "...Not knowledgeable enough to understand the CoT and to race it..."

So work on the new car has been paramount to the RFR organization. Finding an edge to bring the team up to desired speed both intellectually and physically is important.

The new bar was achieving pay-off for the Roush Fenway camp. They have run better in 2008 with the CoT.

Keeping it a "secret" is important. Months of pain-staking research and testing on 7-post rig, track-time, etc. and results should be Roush property.

Sloppiness in policing post-race inspection regarding team property must be addressed. The chaos of the process has to be eliminated.

It's simply not enough to look for race cheating. Someone has to own-up to letting others take stuff that isn't theirs. That is cheating also.

And I will say here that "spying" is nothing new in racing. It's almost expected to take place, but that doesn't mean that the powers that be should be flippant about it.

That does constitute another dimension of rule-breaking, whether it's in the book or not.

Roush is right in his anger. It took his money, time and efforts to develop the technology.

Would others have found the same on their own? That's a possibility, but that becomes a moot point by the potential for others to "in-hand" inspect the part in question.

Competitive edge is the all-important factor here. Every small step can lead to success.

If it's your secret weapon that gets found out, there goes the advantage.