The Ford Mustang has never set a set of slicks onto the high banked ovals of the NASCAR circuit, that is until now. Brian Wolfe, the director of Ford North American Motorsport division has announced that things area bout to change. For the 2010 season, Ford will debut a NASCAR spec Mustang as part of the sereis’s “new car” limited rollout for the 2010 Nationwide Series.
“We had been talking with NASCAR for some time about Mustang as part of its vision for a muscle car rollout for the Nationwide Series. We both saw it as a way of differentiating the series from Sprint Cup,” said Wolfe. “We loved the idea, so we jumped on the chance to extend Mustang’s racing legacy to a new series reaching a huge and loyal audience. Mustang has dominated other forms of racing, including NHRA drag racing, Grand-Am Cup road racing, and Formula D drifting, and now it’s coming to NASCAR Nationwide.
Even if it will only be a Mustang body shell and not a complete race car it is still a step in the right direction for both companies. Ford hopes to take advantage of the old win on Sunday, sell on Monday strategy; while NASCAR needs to step away from the current trend of every car looking exactly the same, aside from the decal package. However it would be nice to see some of that racing technology make its way into a production version, just like the famed Ford 429 Cobra Jet V8 from the 1960s.
Press release after the jump.
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One of the sweet mysteries of life has been why Roger Penske has been unable to win in NASCAR.
Here is a man who has prevailed in every form of racing in which he has participated:
Penske has won the Indianapolis 500 more times than any other owner.
His team was so dominant in the Can-Am Series that he destroyed it, because it was no longer competitive. To this date, the Penske 917 Can-Am Porsche is considered the single most awesome racing car ever created.
Back when Penske was the team owner for the original Trans-Am, his Chevies dominated. Until he switched to, of all things, American Motors. Two years later, the Javelin won the championship. A couple of years after that, the series imploded, partly because it took too much money and too much commitment to compete with Penske.
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Toyota and Chevrolet teams seemed to dominate last week-end’s Bud Shootout at the Daytona International Speedway, and one of each is on the front row for Sunday’s Daytona 500.
But a number of the premier Chevrolet and Toyota drivers will be starting at the back of the field in today’s Dual 150 qualifying races.
They’ve had to change engines after premature wear was discovered in the valve lifters was discovered.
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Joe Gibbs is in the football Hall of Fame, has a Super Bowl ring, and a NASCAR Winston Cup. And, he’s now out as the president and coach of the Washington Redskins.
So, does that mean that Gibbs will start paying more attention to the race team? Or does he leave his son, J.D., in the place where he put him: in charge?
Gibbs’ strength has always been considered to be his people skills, his ability to make a team cohesive. This past year, many believe that it was (...)
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It has been yet another proof of Toyota’s fallibility. It had two – count them, two – top five finishes in Nextel Cup racing last year. No wins.
But, Toyota says that this is the year they put a Camry in the winners circle in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup. They’ve sorted out the engine program. They’ve got Gibbs. Their teams have more cars and more guaranteed starting positions. So says the Toyota Motor Sales v-p for motorsport, Jim Aust, is quoted in (...)
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What should NASCAR do with the old Busch Series, now sponsored by Nationwide Insurance?
Something different. Something very different than the Busch Series.
Though television is what brings the bucks into NASCAR, it’s the ticket sales that make money for the race tracks. For that reason, since that first CBS broadcast of the Daytona 500 in 1979, television broadcasts of NASCAR races have always been afterthoughts. The race is not designed for television. Television (...)
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About this time of year, it begins to set in. NASCAR deprivation.
I know. It was only a few mere weeks ago that we’d all had it with Jimmy Johnson, up to about here. (Yes, he really is worse than Jeff Gordon. So much so, in fact, that I’m actually beginning to like Jeff Gordon.)
But this past week the ARCA competitors were practicing at Daytona, and Christmas is almost here, which means SpeedWeeks is almost almost here, so . . .
Hope springs eternal and (...)
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Next year, NASCAR will require that teams use “the Car of Tomorrow” at all races, beginning with February’s Daytona 500. This completes the transformation of the Sprint Cup into a “spec class” racing series, a major departure from the formula for success that brought NASCAR its initial growth.
Can the series survive the transformation?
Certainly, NASCAR is too big to implode overnight. Yet, it seems evident that the major growth in NASCAR attendance and audience is over. (...)
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No sooner does the NASCAR season end with the last race at Homestead this past Sunday and now NASCAR’s already talking about the first race next year, a race which will be the 50th Daytona 500.
The first car across the starting line will, of course, be the pace car and next year it will be this Corvette Z06. That will be the fifth consecutive year it a Corvette has performed that function.
Chevrolet’s General Manager, Ed Peper, had a few kind words for both (...)
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Is Jimmy Johnson, current and – apparently – future NASCAR Cup Champion real Cup champion? One like Petty, or Earnhardt? Or even the man that would, were they counting the same way they did then, be a six-time champion this year: Gordon?
No. Jimmy Johnson is a plastic creature, the epitome of the “racer” in the environment of NASCAR: a mile and a half tri-oval owned by Bruton Smith.
There was a time when winning the Championship counted for something. That was the time during (...)
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