Stenhouse confident as Roush shows marked improvement

Through seven races, both Stenhouse and teammate, Trevor Bayne, have shown marked improvement.

“Last year we started off the season pretty decent, but we fell off quite a bit. We were never able to really regain the speed that we had early in the season,” said Stenhouse, who is in his fifth full-time season in the Cup series.

“We knew some of the reasons why – we had some of the things taken away that we had that were helping us run better with just through rules changes and things like that. This year, we’ve tried to stay on top of it and made sure we’re not just bringing the same car to the track every week, but a better car to the track every week.

“We got people in place that are always looking for downforce and looking for mechanical grip in our cars. We’re always looking for an update on our cars.”

Making progress

After seven races in his first four full Cup seasons, Stenhouse has been 20th, 24th, 27th and 17th in the series standings. Right now, he is 19th, and similar to last season, he has one top-five and two top-10 finishes already.

One significant difference is Stenhouse’s performance two weeks ago at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, a track on which he has never performed well. Two weeks ago, he finished a career-high 10th. Only twice in his career has he finished better than 25th at the short track.

“We’ve definitely had a better start to the year as far as our speed goes. We’ve been really competitive and really where we wanted to be to start the season, now we just need to make sure we can maintain it,” Stenhouse said.

Sustaining the gains

This year, Stenhouse is convinced those gains can be sustained, but what makes him so certain?

“We’ve changed a lot in the past few off-seasons, but I really feel we have all the pieces in place to maintain our speed and performance,” he said. “We have a lot more confidence going to the track each week.

“Martinsville last week, that’s my worst race track by far and we had a really good car. I feel like after Martinsville, we generally have a really bad race there, and usually it starts to fall off after Bristol.

“But having that really good race at Martinsville was very important for me and the No. 17 team. We changed a lot with our brake package there that helped. I really believe we will maintain our speed and it feels totally different than the last couple years.”

Bayne and Stenhouse went to the repaved and reconfigured Texas Motor Speedway last weekend and came away with solid 13th and 14th-place finishes, respectively.

The importance of winning

While Roush has yet to earn any victories like their Ford counterparts Team Penske and Stewart-Haas Racing, the improvement has been noticeable.

That’s important for Stenhouse, who is confident he and his team have yet to reach their full potential and he is anxious to follow-up an impressive run of two consecutive championships in the Xfinity Series with his first Cup series victory.

“Our first year, I thought we might win at Kansas until an untimely caution came out and we’ve had the good Bristol runs, but as far as being consistent, showing up to the track feeling like I had a top-10 or top-five car that had a chance to win, I haven’t had that very often,” he said.

“We’ve put a lot work in. I’m at the shop more now than I ever was when I was in an Xfinity car, just trying to my part to make sure they get the right feedback and showing the team that I’m in it until we get this thing back to where it needs to be.

“There were times where you might have wanted to just give up and ride around but then something will happen I realize I can’t give up, I have to keep digging forward. I finally feel this is our turning point in our company and could be the turning point of my Cup career.”