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!