Ford plans to debut its new engine next month at Charlotte. It will be used by at least one Ford team not in the Chase. Whether all the Ford teams will be using the new engine at the start of next season, though, is a question. "This is more a team decision than a manufacturer's because the budgets are in their hands on how they do it,'' said Brian Wolfe, Ford Director of North American Motorsports. "We always kid internally that the biggest problem the new engine has is the old engine is so good.''(Roanoke Times)(9-14-2009)

 

I like Brian Wolf but I don't understand any of this. If the old engine was so "good", we'd have some wins this past season. The Ford is literally the oldest engine on the track right now. Chevy has an updated small block, Dodge just did theirs and the Toyota just joined the series recently. I'm pretty let down about this thing not being used as it should be and that is by all teams immediately.

 

New Ford engine at Talladega: Ford will delay the debut of its new Sprint Cup engine, Doug Hervey, who oversees Ford's North American racing operations, said Saturday. The engine was scheduled to have debuted next week at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Instead, Ford will debut the restrictor-plate version of the engine at Talladega in three weeks. As for the non-restrictor-plate engine, it likely will debut at Texas or Homestead.(Virginian Pilot)
AND: Matt Kenseth's crew chief Drew Blickensderfer is expecting to have the new Ford FR9 engine in the #17 Fusion in two weeks at Talladega.
AND: On a related note: Blickensderfer expects to return as crew chief next season even though Kenseth failed to make the Chase for the first time since the format was introduced six years ago.(FoxSports)(10-11-2009)

 

I sure hope they figure out whats wrong with the 17 team. I was hoping Blickenserderfer would be gone. With Robby at the helm, Matt was ALWAYS a contender. With Drew, not even close. It will be nice to see how Matt runs with the FR9 under the hood.