Fenway spark at Daytona
Henry and Dee have a ball with Kenseth's triumph
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - John Henry and Mike Dee must have felt they had been there before.
Maybe it was St. Louis in 2004. Or was it Denver in 2007?
While winning a pair of World Series titles with the Red Sox was a life-altering experience, Henry, the Sox owner, and Dee, the team's chief operating officer and president of Fenway Sports Group, weren't sure what to expect when FSG partnered with NASCAR car owner Jack Roush in 2007 to form the five-car Roush Fenway Racing team.
Standing side by side Sunday night in Victory Lane at Daytona International Speedway, Henry and Dee joined Roush in celebrating Matt Kenseth's triumph in the rain-shortened 51st Daytona 500. For 17 minutes, they had huddled with Kenseth's wife, Katie, waiting for NASCAR's verdict on whether to suspend the race with 152 of 200 laps complete and Kenseth in the lead.
"We were waiting when we heard the instructions from the tower: 'No. 17 to Victory Lane,' " Dee said. "That's the way NASCAR notifies you, over the radio. At that moment, we all looked at each other and everyone started jumping up and down, hollering, and hugging. It was comparable to a World Series moment."
Henry and Dee had an appreciation for the exuberance of the moment ("It never gets old," Dee said) and the manner in which they were sprayed with champagne, showered with confetti, and allowed to hoist the gleaming Harley J. Earl Trophy. Roush said Henry, who now leads the NASCAR owner points, would get to keep the hardware as the owner of record on Kenseth's Ford.
"It's not a world championship, but it's still very special," said Dee, the owner of record on David Ragan's No. 6 Ford, which finished sixth. "The feeling was comparable in nature and we didn't expect it. As great as it was to win the Daytona 500, if we can go on to win a [NASCAR Sprint] Cup championship, it would really make it special."
That's what the folks on Yawkey Way are all about: winning championships. Which explains why it took FSG nearly four years to do due diligence on NASCAR. The group mulled several options: start its own team; partner with a smaller team and use the cachet of its brand name to build the team; or partner with an established marquee team.
FSG chose the latter route, with Roush Racing fitting the bill.
"The partnership is solid and is secure and certainly I think it's amicable in every way," Roush said yesterday at the Daytona 500 Experience, where Kenseth's car will remain on display until next year's race. "But John was with us last night. He was in Victory Lane. He's not much of a champagne sprayer, but we're going to work on that.
"It was his first [Daytona] win and we celebrated that with him. He's been a great partner and certainly has given me confidence to think that we can continue to do all the things we need to do with regard to funding around the team and the strategic decisions we would make on things we would buy for performance.
"But if you're a team owner, or an engineer, or a crew chief, or a driver, the first question you ask is, 'What's the right thing to do?' And then you don't want to have to ask the question of how much it costs, and as it turns out right now, I only have to put 50 cents on every dollar that we put into the team."
Kenseth, who delivered Roush his first championship as a NASCAR owner in 2003, was the first driver to win under the Roush Fenway Racing banner when he won the second race of the 2007 season, the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway. The trophy sits in FSG's offices overlooking the corner of Yawkey Way and Brookline Avenue along with the trophy Greg Biffle won last September in the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which, Dee said, "was the first for Roush Fenway on New England soil."
"That was pretty cool when we won the first race at California after the partnership," Kenseth said. "To me, the partnership was more of an ownership thing, a marketing thing, that type of thing. From what I saw for the company, it didn't change anything that I was involved in.
"I'm more into nuts and bolts and making the car go fast and crew members and stuff, and it didn't change any of that. So I didn't see a big difference. The rest of the people did, but the performance side didn't see a difference, which was a good thing because Jack has always given us everything we've asked for and then some."
Kenseth didn't win another race until the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He wound up winless last season but snapped that drought Sunday with his first Daytona 500 victory, the 17th overall win of his career.
As Henry and Dee soaked up the atmosphere in Victory Lane, the experience validated FSG's decision to partner with Roush.
"Absolutely," Dee said. "The moment [Sunday] night was a moment where we took a step back to appreciate that.
"It was a great moment for Roush Fenway Racing. We know there's some folks in New England who were excited about it. Not only is it Roush Fenway's championship, but from our perspective, it's New England's first Daytona 500 championship and we hope it's something all the fans can enjoy."
Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com. 
