Team Ford Las Vegas

Ford motors way back into Cup elite

DAYTONA BEACH -- It was like watching Criss Angel make something gigantic and important disappear from the stage.

Ford won the first two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races of the 2009 season, then poof, the car company virtually vanished from sight.

The "Blue Oval" team has come back to life, thanks in part to a new engine and a double down on engineering efforts. It's been a long, difficult slog.

Matt Kenseth won the 2009 Daytona 500 and a week later captured the race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.

When the blanket was removed at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 1, 2009, Ford disappeared from Victory Lane.

The dry spell lasted eight months until Jamie McMurray, at the time Roush Fenway Racing's lame duck driver, won at Talladega Superspeedway in October.

The misery was far from over.

It took Ford until August to score its first win in 2010 as it scrambled to catch NASCAR big dogs Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, who had turned Sprint Cup into their personal playground.

It wasn't until the end of the 2010 season, when Carl Edwards in the No. 99 Ford won back-to-back races, that Ford had emerged from the dry spell.

Ford rode that wave of momentum into the 2011 season when Trevor Bayne captured the Daytona 500 in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford, a team with strong ties with car owner Jack Roush.

Roush acts as a clearing house for Ford's NASCAR efforts.

"It is exciting to see all the great accomplishments that are taking place in Ford vehicles," Ford racing director Jamie Allison said in a recent interview.

"I would like to specifically point attention to the fact that here we are, halfway through the year in June, and we have 10 wins this year between Cup and Nationwide, versus none last year at this point in time.

"What a difference a year makes and it is all because of the great team, the great preparation, and the One Ford that we have in NASCAR under the leadership of Jack and the other owners."

Specifically, Ford has four Cup wins, not including the Sprint All Star Challenge captured by Edwards, and six Nationwide victories. Kenseth leads with two Cup victories.

"The whole organization has been building better, faster race cars," Kenseth said. "Roush Yates Engines have done a wonderful job having the off-season to work on the FR9 to get us some more power.

Palo Verde students win scholarships in Ford competition – Las Vegas

It’s one thing to study automotive technology in the relaxed atmosphere of a classroom, but try testing your diagnostic skills against 10,000 students in a nationwide competition and see how you do.

Timothy Allen, 18, and Josh Thomas, 17, both students at Palo Verde High School recently did just that when they competed as finalists in the Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills competition on the lawn of the Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. Their mission was to diagnose nine “bugs,” things that Ford engineers made go wrong in a new Ford F-150 truck, all within 1½ hours. They only missed one bug, earning 11th place and a $2,000 scholarship each to be used toward technical training in an automotive school of their choice.

The road to the national competition wasn’t without a few potholes. Ford, which has been sponsoring this competition for 62 years, initially invited 1,000 students from each state to compete in state competitions. Students were given a written test in February covering engine performance, electrical, brakes, steering and suspension and heating and air conditioning. Two students from each high school with the highest scores were then invited in March to participate in the second phase of their state competition, which consisted of diagnosing problems on a late model vehicle. Kim Een, the students’ teacher at Palo Verde, was able to convince Team Ford to supply a 2011 V-6 Mustang. Een planted 14 bugs in the car covering disconnected switches, fuses, spark-plug wire problems, etc.

“I freaked out when I saw the car,” Allen remembered thinking. He had never worked on a brand new vehicle, let alone what he considered the “awesome looking” Mustang.

The students were given 1½ hours to diagnose the Mustang’s issues. Ten teams, of two students each, competed in Nevada with vehicles they secured on their own and initially Allen and Thomas came in second place. But because the national competition fell on the graduation day of the first-place team, Palo Verde High School was invited to go to nationals. Of course they accepted. They also each earned a $20,000 scholarship for being selected the Nevada representatives.

When Een got the phone call and invitation from Ford, he said Allen and Thomas were ecstatic. They were among 100 students Ford was flying in and putting up at hotels in Dearborn to test their skills on diagnosing problems with F-150s, staged on the corporate headquarter’s front lawn.

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