It's All About Speed
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This is just one of Jack's garages filled with cars that have played an important part in his life. It's actually a museum that you can visit.
The visibility at Concord wasn't bad at about two miles, but the ceiling was at 300 feet, just 100 feet above the decision height on the ILS approach. Another perfectly flown approach and good landing. He clearly has confidence in the Premier, and his flying capability.
The Roush-Fenway operation at Concord is simply amazing. Each racing team needs an average of 16 cars for the season, all built from scratch by Roush. The chassis of the cars is made primarily from beefy steel tubes welded together. NASCAR dictates almost every detail of the car's shape and construction, but there is some room to make potential gains in design and placement of the suspension components. The engines -- also built by a Roush business -- are also tightly regulated, but seemingly minor changes can greatly impact power output and durability. Roush is one of only a few teams racing Fords on the NASCAR circuit and the basic components of the engine must come from the Ford specialty parts catalog, but everything else is customized by his operation.
The cars are built in a common fabrication shop but the final finish work and setup for race day is done by the individual race teams. So even though the Carl Edwards number 99 car began life in the same fabrication shop, it will never be touched by the number 16 team of Greg Biffle. All five teams are owned and operated by Roush Fenway Racing, but the entire staff and equipment stays with each individual team.
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Roush showed Flying's Mac McClellan how airflow lifts the spoilers on the roof of a NASCAR racer to help keep it from flipping during a slide or spin. Rolls-Royce and Packard painted Merlin engines black, but this engine's owner wanted his overhauled engine bright red, so Roush's technicians obliged.
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An aviation inspired safety feature Roush developed was the rooftop spoilers you see flip up when a NASCAR racer gets sideways or worse. The car's aerodynamics are all designed to help keep it down on the track when moving forward, but those features all work against a car when it spins, slides or starts moving backward. In that case the airflow is working to flip the car instead of keeping it upright. Roush realized that spoiling the lift created by this airflow over the roof could help, so square spoiler panels that are literally sucked up by the errant airflow were installed on each car's top. The results have been far fewer rollovers and flips. And the spoilers operate entirely from aerodynamic forces like the leading edge slats on a Sabreliner or F-86 so there is no mechanical linkage or other actuator required.
Roush teams also compete in the second tier Nationwide NASCAR series so dozens more cars must be built, maintained and repaired for that program. And he even competes in the pickup truck series so there are more vehicles and engines to be built and maintained.
A big part of the operation at Concord is maintenance and repair. Since NASCAR drivers are so fond of trading paint, a car almost never comes back from a race without needing at least cosmetic work. And often huge areas of the body skin must be replaced along with suspension components. Engines get at least a complete teardown and usually a total rebuild, as do other parts of the power train including transmissions and rear ends.
And the human part of the racing machine also gets special treatment at Concord with a comprehensive physical training facility and mandatory workouts for the pit crew. The crews also hone their rapid tire change and refueling skills at a special practice area that has a pit wall and all necessary equipment to replicate the real track pit. I watched a driver roar into the practice pit with crew jumping over the wall before he braked to a stop. The effort looked good to me, but not to the coaches who had the crew do the same routine again, and again for who knows how long.
Roush is the only team owner who sends his entire crew to the track in his own airplanes. He owns Boeing 727s that fly the entire teams plus other support staff to the track, and then gets them back home late Sunday night, a feat that would be impossible without company operated airplanes.
The previous race had not gone up to Roush standard with several pit crew mistakes, and some mechanical issues, so Jack appeared to spend the day at Concord in a series of meetings reminding people of what he expected. I was glad to be out touring the shop and not getting my butt chewed as some team members clearly were.
A little after six it was time to head back to Willow Run. By now areas of heavy rain had moved over the Detroit area and Jack and I were looking at them on the XM Weather display on the Collins Pro Line 21 system in the Premier. A gap had formed in the heavy precip just to the west of Willow Run so Jack negotiated a new routing that took us through that gap. The air was moderately rough but the small and flexible wing of the Premier gives a good ride in the turbulence.
It was dark, raining, and visibility was down to a mile or so for the ILS into Willow Run, and again Roush turned in a stellar performance. After landing he insisted I couldn't help get the Premier into his hangar so I sat in the warm, dry cockpit while out in the near freezing rain he hooked up the tug and backed the Premier expertly between the Mustang and T-6. He does everything the Roush way.
I came away impressed. Roush expertly flew three legs in poor weather and did a day's work in his racing business that could not have been accomplished any other way. The Premier really showed off its speed and good flying qualities under poor conditions. Roush is quick to tell you that he is one lucky guy, but I got to see first hand how that luck has been made with very long days and seemingly endless energy to do everything just right. Next time you tune in a NASCAR race and see a Roush Fenway team think about the number of airplanes that it took to make that happen. And how he still finds time to preserve Mustangs and the Merlins that make them magical.
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