17 Days ‘til Daytona: Roush Fenway Racing

With 17 days until the green drops at Daytona, it’s time to check out one of my favorite teams on the circuit, the boys at Roush Fenway Racing.

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 car, was picked by the Yahoo Sports panel of experts to finish the year 9th in points. His teammate Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Ford, was picked to finish 8th. So far I haven’t seen Carl Edwards, but I would assume he’ll be a top-five guy.

Biffle won at Pocono in August and the boys of RFR ended the season on a high note, winning three races in the Chase, including Carl Edwards taking the last two races of the season.

After this season though, Edwards will be a “free agent,” of sorts and so will the fourth RFR driver, David Ragan. Chances are high that Edwards will stay at Roush, although you never know in today’s big money world of NASCAR where he might end up.

Conspiracy theorists of the world are currently scheming up a plan to see Ragan depart RFR after his fifth season. In four seasons in the highest level of racing, Ragan has never won a race, and his average finish is 21.6.

Who else could possibly want to inherit the No. 6 car after this season?

If you said Mark Martin, well, you’d be on the right track. As much as I chastised some media members for hounding Mark at Indy last year, I can’t help but take this opportunity to say how interesting this plan is.

Just don’t ask Mark Martin about it until about October or so.

I’m interested to see if that theory pans out this year, and I’ll hold off on my thoughts about that situation until something actually happens. Maybe Ragan will have a banner year, win some races and fight for a Chase berth. Then Roush will re-sign the 25 year old from Unadilla, Georgia.

Until that happens we’ll sit back and wait.

And until Carl Edwards is ready to announce his 2012 plans, I feel we should also all sit back and wait.

I think RFR will be pretty darn good in 2012, but I’m not sure that any of the four drivers in Roush’s camp can challenge Jimmie Johnson or any of the Gibbs boys for the title. If Carl Edwards is up there though, I wouldn’t be horribly surprised.
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Tomorrow we’ll look back at another Daytona 500 from the past. I consider this one to be one of my personal favorites, and it might have been the first one I ever watched. Check back then, have a safe Thursday.