New Crew Chief for the No. 16 Team

Hello all- my name is Rick Viers and I am the new crew chief for the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford at Roush Fenway Racing. I am very excited at the opportunity I have to work with this team. While I’ve only been on the job for a little over a week, I can see that there are a lot of good people here. Our engineering staff is very strong and we have the opportunity to win races, which we hope to do in the near future! I have been in racing for 23 years and have worked most recently with Baker Curb Racing and Greg Biffle, as well as Red Bull Racing, Bill Davis Racing and Richard Childress Racing. Over my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to win eight races as a crew chief. We came awful close with Greg a few times earlier in the season as well.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Colin and the rest of the team over the past week. Colin is a very focused race car driver and he gives good feedback about his car, which is extremely helpful for me. We talked about some of our goals last week and have three of them for the remainder of the season: we want to get into the top-15 in points, win at least one race this year and win the rookie of the year title. I believe these goals are absolutely attainable and look forward to accomplishing them with Colin and this group of guys.

While I spend a majority of my time at the shop or racetrack as I continue to learn all I can about the team and organization, I really enjoy spending time with my family and riding dirt bikes when I am able.

Well, I hope I was able to provide you all with a little more insight into who I am and how excited I am to be a part of the Con-way Freight team. I look forward to seeing some of you out at the track!

Rick

Joey Cohen, head engineer, gives you an inside look

Hello to all the Con-way Freight racing fans! My name is Joey Cohen and I am the head engineer on the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford Fusion driven by Colin Braun in the Nationwide series. I am excited to visit and tell you a little about myself and the activities I perform weekly for the race team as an Engineer.

I am 25 years old and have been at Roush Fenway Racing for four years now and am proud to say that all have been with the No. 16 team. Prior to working at Roush Fenway, I received my Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a concentration in the field of motorsports.

On a weekly basis, I work closely with the crew chief Eddie Pardue, the car chief Ryan McKinney, and all of our team members to prepare the car to race every week. This includes work in the areas of kinematics, aerodynamics, and computer simulation, as well as race strategy at the track. Every week we visit what is known as a “K-rig” to evaluate different suspension options to optimize our car for the upcoming race event. These test machines are available for our use at the Roush Cup shop in Concord and get used by all teams during the week.

Something that people may be more familiar with is the wind tunnel. The tunnel we utilize most often is located here in Mooresville, N.C. making the logistics easier. The two most common cars taken for evaluation are the speedway and down force cars (cars used at 1.0 - 1.5-mile tracks).

The most well known part of my job involves traveling with the team every week to the track to serve as the race engineer. As a race engineer, we are responsible for keeping track of changes in practice, providing the crew chief with practice reports, and communicating with the other Roush teams. We are basically the information network as a group. I also calculate fuel mileage during the race and assist the crew chief with race strategy. I communicate with the other engineers during the race through instant messaging and radios.

This week we have the opportunity to test Daytona International Speedway for the upcoming race with the New Nationwide car. I have spent the weekend preparing the car with instrumentation for collecting data for certain areas of the car such as suspension travel, driver inputs, and engine performance. I will also monitor the system at the test and relay information to the crew chief about the car’s characteristics and performance.

I hope everyone has enjoyed hearing a little bit about my job as an Engineer.

Thanks for checking in, on to Daytona!

Be sure to follow me on twitter @JCohen16 for more insight!

Insights from the crew chief

Hello everyone. My name is Eddie Pardue and I’m the crew chief for the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford. I just wanted to check in and give you a little bit of insight about how I got to where I am today. I have been at Roush Fenway Racing for eight years and worked as shock technician and spotter on the No. 6 car with Mark Martin prior to becoming a crew chief. When Roush Fenway expanded its Nationwide Series programs at the time Greg Biffle was the driver of the No. 16 car, I was named crew chief. Being a crew chief has a lot of responsibilities. Just a few of them include scheduling of the work to be done on the cars, working on and finalizing race track set-ups, and pit stops. Organizational and motivational skills are necessary in being a good crew chief too, but these aren’t to be overlooked by the need for technical skill.

I’ve really enjoyed working with Colin and seeing him grow in the sport. We are excited to get him back in the car at Dover in a few weeks. Dover is a very fast track and is unique for being high banked and concrete. It is one of only a handful of concrete tracks on the circuit. We are looking to have a strong run there as we always do. Colin has done well in the Truck Series at Dover so he will be right up to speed in the Nationwide car as well.

I hope that gave everyone some insight in to my world as the crew chief of the No. 16 Con-way Freight car! We’ll catch up with you all again soon.

Eddie

Preparing for the Long Stretch

Hey everyone. I hope you’ve had a good couple of weeks. The trip back from Las Vegas was pretty good. We ran into some weather though around Flagstaff, Ariz., which was a little unexpected. It was snowing, but fortunately, the roads were just wet. We did loose a hubcap somewhere between here and there too, so let us know if anyone sees it! The hardest part about coming back from a trip like that, besides trying to catch up on rest, was getting our poor car out of the hauler. We had a pretty good run going there in Vegas, but we caught the raw end of a restart with 30 laps to go. It was an encouraging race though, so we’re excited to get back racing.

We have a couple of weeks off here and my main focus is rest and relaxation. We will be testing next week though, but it will only be a day trip. With the help of my co-driver, we are going to work to get the hauler ready for the long stretch of traveling ahead of us. With the exception of the two weeks we are here in Charlotte in May, we will be on the road racing every weekend until September. That’s a really long time and we want to make sure everything is in top shape.

Well, that’s about all for now. Make sure if you see the No. 16 Con-way Freight hauler out on the road that you give us a shout. See you all in Bristol!

Rabbi

Looking back on Daytona

Well, we got home from Daytona early Sunday morning. It wasn’t exactly the finish we were hoping for, but man those guys worked their butts off to get the car back in order to get some more points. So, I get a night at home and then we head west on Monday. The trip from Charlotte Motor Speedway to California Speedway is 2,445 miles. My co-driver Greg and I will take the southern route (route 85 to 20 to 10) to get out there. This time of year, you just never know what the weather is going to bring and it just makes sense to do that. We really don’t stop a whole lot, just each take our turns in the pilot’s seat.

Eddie and the guys will switch out the Con-way Freight cars at California and Greg and I will just stay out on the west coast while they all go back to the shop in North Carolina. That will give us some time to clean up, get groceries and just get the hauler ready for when the guys come back the following Thursday. We’ve even talked about going fishing for a few days which sounds like a good time to me.

Well, I hope you all have a good week and safe travels. If you ever see the black No. 16 Con-way Freight hauler coming though, feel free to give me a shout.

Rabbi