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Ford (NYSE:F) will finally debut its new generation Cup engine this weekend at Talladega.

The engine, dubbed the FR9, is the first for Ford not based on production engine design and parts. The rollout will be limited to the Roush-Fenway cars of Matt Kenseth and David Ragan, both of whom are not in the Chase for the Championship.

"When we say purpose-built, it ties back to the fact that this engine is designed right from a clean sheet of paper to optimize how we need this race engine to perform, and is unconstrained by any of the production boundaries that the current engine had to deal with," Ford racing director Brian Wolfe said.

Wolfe said the new engine has a lower center of gravity and is expected to have better cooling systems and heat transfer. Wolfe hopes the better cooling will allow engines to survive with less airflow, which would allow teams to put more tape on grills to improve aerodynamics.

Doug Yates, co-owner of Yates-Roush Engines which supplies all Ford teams in the series, said Talladega was chosen to help get the engine ready for use in more cars at the Daytona 500 in February. The engine was also used in a recent test at Daytona.

"I feel really good about the engine," Yates said. "After the Daytona test we saw some things that after a normal race weekend we would come back and adjust on -- the valve spring load loss was a little bit more than what we would like to see. We made some adjustments around the valve train, and with our test requirements here in-house, I feel really good about going to the race track this weekend with it. Would I be more nervous if this was the Daytona 500 in 2010? Sure, but I feel pretty good about the engine."

The engine was to have debuted earlier this year.

"We were ready to go to Daytona in July, and we actually had some parts that came in that were wrong, so that got pushed back," Yates said. "But when we did further testing, we found that we were not as ready as we thought we were, so that was a bit of a blessing."

Engines are required by NASCAR to be equipped with carburetor restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladgea as a way to reduce horsepower and keep speeds under 200 miles an hour. Yates said the restrictor-plate races provide a tough test for engines despite a sizable reduction in horsepower.

"These engines at Talladega in restricted format turn 9,000 rpm, which is amazing," Yates said. "When NASCAR brought the COT on and they put more gear in the car so the drivers would have better throttle response, as an engine builder it was really concerning and we had a lot of work to do to take an engine that used to turn 7,000 rpm and make it turn 9,000 rpm. So this is a very demanding track and it'll be a good test for the engine this weekend."

Yates said Ford hopes to also put the engine in some cars in non-restrictor plate races before the end of the year. He said the goal is to have the engine available for use across the board by the middle of next year.

"As we ramp it up and we get more parts in-house, and we gain more confidence in the reliability and the performance of the engine, we'll start bringing it out with more teams across the board, and work our way into having all the teams running the engine, hopefully, by mid-season," Yates said.