There’s a New Dodge for NASCAR, But Who Will Drive It?
Monday, March 12th, 2012By Drew Hierwarter
Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Several weeks ago Penske Racing announced that they were severing their 10 year relationship with Dodge and, beginning with the 2013 NASCAR season, would be racing Ford products.
That leaves Robby Gordon as the only Dodge team in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.
Dodge executives say they understand Roger Penske’s decision as being strictly a business one and are actively seeking another team.
Dodge Motorsports president Ralph Gilles has stated that there are several teams who have shown an interest in running the new Charger; “With the way our phone is ringing, I’m not too concerned,” Gilles said. “It’s been a pretty positive thing”.
However, Gilles also left open the possibility that Dodge would not be in NASCAR in the near future. “Based on the momentum we’ve developed, we don’t feel it’s going that way,” Gilles said, “We would love to stay if we can, but we have to figure it out. We’re actually investing in NASCAR more than ever. Some of this timing (of Penske’s announcement) was unfortunate. Some things Roger didn’t realize we were doing are coming to pass.”
All four of the manufacturers competing in NASCAR will debut a new car for the 2013 season. They have been working together with NASCAR since 2010 to develop a car that retains the parity that NASCAR wants with the individual brand identity that both the manufacturers and the fans want.
The new Ford Fusion was unveiled at Daytona, and this past weekend at Las Vegas, Dodge debuted the new Charger.
David Bailey is the senior manager for SRT Motorsports Engineering and he said; “We didn’t want to do it with just decals. We wanted a real identity, real features on the car that you see on the street car. After the design process started — and approximately 2,000 e-mails, and 600 drawings later — we’ve got a car that everyone knows is a Dodge Charger.”
So Dodge has a new racecar for the 2013 NASCAR season. It looks a lot more like a production Charger that you can buy than the current NASCAR Charger does. The only real question is; who will race it?