Team Penske will have more help carrying the Ford banner in 2017 when Stewart-Haas Racing shifts over from Chevy to Ford and Team Penske seems happy about it.
The addition to Stewart-Haas Racing to Ford in 2017 is something that shocked the NASCAR would when it was announced a few weeks ago by Ford and SHR.
While the initial shock of the announcement is now over, the focus has now shifted to what the future holds for all of those involved. The past couple of seasons Team Penske has been at the front in the NASCAR for Ford but now many wonder if there will be a shift come 2017 when SHR is in the mix. The shift also brings questions about what that does to RFR and their standing with Ford as well as how Chevy will look to replace a quality team like SHR.
Time will be the only thing to answer all of these questions but Roger Penske is certainly looking forward to working together with SHR when they come over next season. On Saturday Penske was on hand for IndyCar’s opening weekend and he spoke about SHR moving to Ford next season.
"If you have four of one thing you’re going to be better than if you had two, and I think what Ford looked at is the number of cars Chevy and Toyota had. They looked to expand their footprint. As far as we’re concerned we feel good about it. If Ford is successful, it’s gonna help us. With two cars, it’s hard to carry the banner as we did last year.I think that we’ll do what we’ve done with Roush. We’ve put cars in the windtunnel – our car and their car to see where we are. We’ll do benchmarking, we have to race these guys every weekend. I don’t think [Hendrick’s star crew chief] Chad Knaus gives Stewart-Haas guys the playbook or vice versa. The things that will help overall, I think there’ll be some collaboration in some way, and we’re glad to see that."
SHR coming to Ford in 2017 will without question make the Ford stable stronger.
It’s interesting to hear Penske talk about Roush the way that he did. Penske referenced Team Penske carrying the Ford banner alone, which isn’t true given the fact that RFR has a larger stable than Penske does despite not having the results. It’s also interesting how Penske talked about two cars not being able to carry the load, again there are more than two Fords in NASCAR right now. Penske might not have said it straight out, but it’s clear they don’t view RFR as much of anything.
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As far as SHR goes, the best hope for next season is a smooth transition. Bowyer will be entering his first season with SHR, Harvick and Busch will be another year old and Danica will be Danica (most likely still looking to improve). The bottom line is that nobody at SHR is going to want to go through a season of growing pains or find themselves behind the eight ball because of the switch. Many predict there might be a dip in production for SHR in 2017 and if there is that’s okay, just as long as they are still winning races and putting themselves in a position to win championships.