Roush Fenway's David Ragan to test new Ford engine at Homestead
Roush Fenway Racing teammates Matt Kenseth (17) and David Ragan (6) have been the only drivers to test the new Ford engine, known as the FR9, this season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. // Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Scene
Ford officials will test the manufacturer's new engine on an unrestricted track for the first time this weekend as Roush Fenway Racing's David Ragan races with the model at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The new Sprint Cup engine, known as the FR9, was previously tested in the race at Talladega Superspeedway. It was raced in the cars of Ragan and teammate Matt Kenseth and did not have any performance issues.
Now, the manufacturer will test it on the 1.5-mile Florida track. The engine is expected to be slowly worked into usage over the course of the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
“It’s a different durability cycle that we had to run, and we wanted to make sure that the cooling system was optimized for the performance of the engine, in terms of its power output," said Doug Hervey, North American Operations manager, Ford Racing Technology. "And we feel somewhat pleased with how its gone so far."
Hervey said that the Talladega race showed the engineers that the prerace reliability testing "was spot-on" and that a teardown of those engines revealed no issues.
Now, the manufacturer will test it once more as it prepares for 2010.
"It gives us a good look at how the engine will perform on the track," Hervey said of using it in this race. "You know, the engine has been tested on a dyno with race-durability runs, so it has simulated racing, but it hasn’t been out in the environment. This is going to [be] great. This is going to be a good test for us to see how the engine performs on track, because during the dyno-simulation runs we can’t simulate the ‘dirty air,’ if you will, and all the environmental conditions that the engine will see. So this will give us a good barometer for where we are at with the engine.”
Ragan crew chief Jimmy Fennig hopes that the engine helps the team net a strong finish to help boost momentum heading into the offseason. The year clearly hasn't gone as the group had hoped, and Ragan enters the season finale 27th in the standings. Testing the engine, and trying to run as well as possible, will be the team’s primary goals for this race.
"Things haven’t gone our way this year, and we’ve struggled some," Ragan said. "Getting a solid finish at Homestead with the new engine on our last race of the year would be the confidence builder this team needs heading into the offseason.”
