A quick look at the manufacturer championship standings would reveal that Ford has been struggling this season. In terms of wins, they are nowhere near Chevrolet, and just barely keeping up with Toyotas. Despite having several NASCAR teams under its belt, top teams like Team Penske have had a rather disappointing season so far whereas teams like RFK Racing, which had faded into obscurity before, suddenly emerged as the top contenders in the Ford cadre.
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Recently, while speaking in an interview, the $3.6 Billion-worth team owner; Rodger Penske, spoke about how the 2023 season had been disappointing for his Cup Series team. Furthermore, he also explained how things had been tricky to set up with the new cars and how they had been improving, but remained slower than the other Ford cars.
Rodger Penske talks about a disappointing 2023 season in NASCAR Cup Series
While conversing with Sirius XM NASCAR Radio, Penske mentioned, “Well, we’ve had a good year but not the year that we want. Obviously, let’s be honest with you we’ve had people driving Fords that have been better than we are. People talked about maybe we didn’t have the right balance and the right aerodynamics.”
🗣️ “We’ve had a good year, but not the year that we want, obviously […] this car has been tricky to figure out.” #NASCAR
Defending Cup Series champion Roger Penske says there’s work to be done to improve their program as they aim for back-to-back championships 🏆 pic.twitter.com/nkw2TGXoRs
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) August 31, 2023
“This car has been tricky to figure out the underwing, all the things that are different on the new car… We obviously are doing simulations, we’re trying to get information from all we learned in Supercars and how we set those cars up in Australia and similar type vehicles.”
Penske further explained how there had been ups and downs from last year as well. How they were not fast enough and had been lackluster among other things. But in comparison, he added how the team had improved themselves this season with the pitstops.
He added, “So to me, this is just about commitment. And you know, we’re not in the racing business… we are racers and racers never give up.”
Team Penske is not the top team for Ford this season
Ford has already been struggling with the performance of their cars so far this season. While in the second half, they have picked up a few more wins, it is nothing compared to the Chevrolet-powered cars in the grid. Meanwhile, even Toyota with fewer cars on the grid has more wins the the Ford roster.
Earlier into this season, the only wins by Ford had been at the hand of Team Penske’s Joey Logano at the Atlanta Motor Speedway and Ryan Blaney at the Coca-Cola 600. But none of the other Ford teams had been able to win anything.
It was only in the last couple of weeks that the tide turned for Ford after Brad Keselowski led RFK Racing powered through with two consecutive wins for Chris Buescher at Richmond Raceway and Michigan International Speedway. Finally, the third at Daytona during the regular season finale race last weekend.
Furthermore, FRM’s Michael McDowell also won a race at the Indy Road course. This result propelled both RFK cars in the playoffs, thus leading the charge amongst the Ford roster. All of a sudden, RFK was Ford’s top team for the 2023 Cup Series season, instead of Team Penske or the others.
