Roush confident in team's form

Roush Fenway Racing have won the first two races of the series playoff with Greg Biffle, and have Carl Edwards leading the standings. The team's cars swept the top three at Dover last weekend and also led the most laps during the race.

The team last won a Cup title in 2004 with Kurt Busch when the Chase format was first implemented. A year before, Matt Kenseth was crowned champion and he has also been in the hunt in recent years, finishing runner-up in 2006.

Back in 2005, though, they were the team to beat, winning four of the last ten races while four of their five drivers made the Chase. Roush drivers also finished second, third, and fourth in the championship in that year, headed by Biffle.

Roush believes since then, the team have made major progress, giving him confidence that the strong start to this year's Chase is no fluke. He says they've learned how to make the most of the technology available, while at the same time building a stronger relationship with their manufacturer.

"In 2005, we had just started to take a serious look at the algorithms, the predictive things, and the data analysis programs that some of the other teams were using," Roush said. "Most weren't, but a couple had started to use them. We were just starting to look at that stuff and we didn't have the organisation in place.

"We hadn't partnered with Ford to the extent we have since, so we weren't in a position to be able to go testing. As (Greg Biffle's crew-chief) Greg Erwin said after the last race, to spend three or four days with three or four people looking at the data to figure out what it said.

"Now we know how to use the data, we know how to use the tests to our best advantage."

Roush is confident that his team are ready for the coming intermediate ovals, starting next weekend with Kansas. However, he added that he has some apprehension towards some of the other tracks remaining in the calendar, even if he believes they can at least maintain their level of performance at those venues.

"We think we're ready to go to one and a half mile tracks and race," he said. "We were confident that we would make a good showing at Dover, we were apprehensive about Loudon, and that same apprehension flows to some extent, in my mind, to Phoenix and certainly to Martinsville.

"We're apprehensive about Talladega, the amount of control we use there in determining our destiny. We think we've got the code on mile and a half racetracks and we'll be able to maintain whatever our performance level is at the other places."