Disappointing season means busy winter for Roush Fenway Racing

It's hard to believe a team that opened the year winning the first two races would look back at 2009 as a failure.

But there's no other way to describe Roush Fenway Racing's season.

Despite Matt Kenseth's season-opening Daytona 500 win and his follow-up trip to Victory Lane the next week at Auto Club Speedway, the RFR organization suffered through one of the most disappointing campaigns in recent memory.

Matt Kenseth failed to make the Chase after winning 2009's first two races. (Getty Images)

Although Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards did make the Chase, neither was a serious challenger for the championship. And Jamie McMurray's win at Talladega was the only other Roush triumph of the year.

The thought of Edwards going winless seemed impossible heading into the 2009 campaign based on his series-leading nine victories the previous season.

Edwards was the preseason favorite by many to unseat Jimmie Johnson as the Sprint Cup champion, but things ended up with him finishing 11th in the standings and being shut out of Victory Lane.

The season also included Edwards ending the spring Talladega race nearly in the front stretch grandstands after his violent last-lap wreck with Brad Keselowski and Ryan Newman. Then just for good measure, Edwards fractured his foot later in the year playing Frisbee with friends, an accident that pretty much summed up the disappointing campaign.

"It's very tough to make a plan for your results," Edwards said, looking back at the season. "I know for our performance we're going to do everything we can this winter. I think it was a big wakeup call for me and our team that you could become uncompetitive so easily, and we're just going to work hard. I don't know what's going to happen next year. I hope we get back on track."

Biffle can echo those words after also coming up dry in the Sprint Cup Series win department. He did finish seventh in the final standings but knows things will need to improve dramatically in 2010 to compete with Johnson and Hendrick Motorsports for a title.

"I'm going to say we had an average year," said Biffle. "We really, really had an average year, a 'C.' We came close to winning several times. That's one positive thing about our season. We came very close at Kansas, very close at California, a few others, Texas. So that's good that we were running competitive enough to get into Victory Lane.

"The unfortunate part is we weren't competitive enough all season. We were spotty on being good enough to win, and we've got to be better than that. We know that."

At least Edwards and Biffle were able to make the playoffs, something that eluded Kenseth for the first time since the Chase format was introduced.

After getting out of the gate faster than anyone with back-to-back wins to open the schedule, Kenseth fell on hard times and couldn't rally late in the season to earn a Chase berth.

Kenseth believes the 2009 disappointment was the sum of several things simply not working.

"We're always trying to get better, we just haven't been able to do it," Kenseth said. "We're missing something, in my opinion, with the organization to start with to make all of our cars faster. ... I think we need to really look hard at engineering and some of the stuff we're doing to make these cars run to start with, and on the 17 we need a little work, too. We've been inconsistent on pit road. I've been inconsistent.

"There are certain things I can do better as well, so we just need to evaluate the whole thing and try to get back to where it needs to be."

Count David Ragan as another driver trying to get back to where he needs to be. After a stellar rookie year, Ragan was considered a lock to find his first career Sprint Cup win in 2009 and perhaps slide into the Chase.

But Ragan's sophomore season turned out to be a disaster. He netted no top fives and just two top 10s on the way to finishing 27th in the standings, a performance that forced team owner Jack Roush to replace crew chief Jimmy Fennig in hopes of finding a way to turn things around for the No. 6 team.

"In racing, a lot of times you create your own luck," Ragan said philosophically. "By not qualifying well or running in the back, you get caught up in a wreck. It's bad luck, but a 'we-shouldn't-have-been-back-there' kind of thing. A lot of times I feel like we can't catch a break. If we could just be on the lucky side of a couple things and get a few good runs, we can build some momentum and be that Chase team like I think we are. We're just trying to stay positive."

McMurray did his best to stay positive throughout the year, knowing that because of NASCAR's rule to mandate a four-car limit for each team in 2010 he and the No. 26 entry would be the odd man out of the Roush stable.

He performed admirably and parlayed his Talladega victory into a new ride with his move to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing in 2010.

Season preview

While Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing showed strength down the stretch in 2009, there's not much from the Roush camp's performance that could be seen as a reason to feel confident about the new year.

But the introduction of the new Ford engine, which was tested sporadically in the closing stages of last year's schedule, could provide the much-needed boost for Roush Fenway to return to power.

The four-car stable will have Edwards, Biffle, Kenseth and Ragan intact with an alliance to the Richard Petty Motorsports organization, which has set up shop in the old Yates Racing headquarters across the street from RFR.

Perhaps the new power plant and the strength in having another four-car team alliance with RPM will be enough to propel Roush back to Victory Lane and into contention for a title in 2010.