Great year for Roush–almost

Before the celebration for Tony Stewart begins in earnest, and the lament for Mark Martin deepens, consider the year of ordeal/triumph/ordeal Jack Roush has survived.

The diminutive self-made man/engineer from Michigan wasn’t even sure he wanted to embark on this, his 15th season as a Winston Cup team owner. It has turned out to be his best and his worst.

Last year the team had but two victories, both by Jeff Burton. Martin, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth went winless. That season “took me to my absolute knees,” Roush says. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to do this thing . . . “

Soon after he had pressed on, full force, he nearly died in a plane crash on his 60th birthday, April 19. He was piloting a tiny, experimental plane, loaned by friends for the flying party they gave him on a Talladega race weekend. He likely would have drowned, but for an ex-Marine named Larry Hicks, who plunged into the fuel-slicked pond near Troy, Ala., pulled Roush free and resuscitated him.

But, typical Roush: “When I woke up, the first thing I wanted to know was if I’d messed up,” he recalls, meaning as a pilot, his only non-racing hobby. He hadn’t. There had been an unseen wire in his path.

Then suddenly, typically again, there he was in the garages again, on crutches at first because of fractures to both legs. Then the crutches were gone and you never would have known he had been away or even slowed down.

He was back to rubbing NASCAR the wrong way again, calling ’em like he saw ’em in a league that likes to hear its party line regurgitated by its “independent contractors,” the owners and drivers. (Years earlier, the late Dale Earnhardt had dubbed him “Cactus Jack.” Why? “Prickly,” was Earnhardt’s only explanation, with a sort of ironic admiration in the tone.)

And now, Roush’s drivers have won more races, nine, than any other team this season. Kenseth has won five, the most of any driver in the series. Busch has won three, and Martin one. Burton, oddly, is the only winless one this year.

Mighty Hendrick Motorsports, also a four-car team, has but six victories, three each by Jeff Gordon and his rookie protege, Jimmie Johnson. Three-car Richard Childress Racing has one victory, at Chicagoland by Earnhardt’s replacement, Kevin Harvick.

What Roush won’t win–barring a long shot by Martin in Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway–is a Winston Cup.

Again.

Fifteen years, 59 race victories, but zero championships for Roush drivers in NASCAR’s elite series.

Greg Biffle did clinch Roush’s first title in the Busch series, NASCAR’s version of Triple A baseball, Saturday at Phoenix. Yeah, well . . .

“I feel like I’m 16 years old when I was a sophomore in high school and my most unfavorite teacher gave me a good conduct award,” Roush said. “That’s what a NASCAR championship means to me right now.”

A pat on the head, rather than the “A” in the course: the Winston Cup.

Not that Roush is certain he, via Martin, would have gotten the “A.” It’s just that Martin would have had a better chance at Homestead, Fla., on Sunday if NASCAR officials hadn’t penalized him 25 points after finding an “unapproved” spring in his car after he finished second at Rockingham, N.C., on Nov. 3.

With an 89-point margin, Stewart must finish only 22nd or better–even if Martin wins the race and collects bonus points for leading the most laps–to win the title. If not for the penalty, the margin would be 64 and Stewart would have had to finish 14th or better.

The difference? Consider 1997, when Jeff Gordon arrived at the Atlanta finale needing to finish 17th or better to beat Dale Jarrett for the title. Gordon almost choked–crashed on pit road during practice, had to go to a backup car, struggled home 16th in the race.

If you feel for Martin because this likely will be the fourth time he has finished second in the point standings for the championship–including 1990, when he was penalized 46 points by NASCAR after a race win, and then wound up losing the season title to Earnhardt by 26–and his eighth finish of third or better, then feel for Roush, who has been Martin’s car owner every step down this trail of near misses.

This time the Roush team was nailed for a spring that made 4 3/8 coils, rather than the NASCAR-required 4 1/2 spirals. It was, by Martin’s description, “a quarter-inch” short, and created absolutely no advantage in the Rockingham race. The spring was purchased, the Roush team says, from a NASCAR-approved supplier and installed in good faith, without alteration by the team.

At yet another round of what he sees as NASCAR nitpicking–if not just plain picking on Jack Roush–“I am so upset, so out of my mind, that I can’t organize a decent thought that would be reasonable to set a strategy around,” Roush says of how the team will or won’t address the penalty further.

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With four cars, might Roush mount a blocking strategy to hold up Stewart, even though NASCAR officials will be watching closely?

“The short answer is no,” Roush says. “We are one race team that races four cars, but the feeling of fair play does pervade the team. If Tony Stewart wins by more than 25 points, we’ll certainly celebrate his victory as we should. . . . Our guys, without any conversation, will give him every consideration to have clean track and an opportunity to do what he needs to do.”

But if Stewart wins by 25 or less . . . well, Jack Roush is alive, and the winningest owner in NASCAR this year. One-eighth of a coil on a spring can’t change that.