An offseason of near non-stop driver and team moves has carried right into the beginning of the 2012 NASCAR season.
Penske Racing announced Thursday it will switch manufacturers by ditching Dodge to return to Ford for the 2013 season, a move that sets up a long line of dominoes for the next Silly Season.
Over the last several years the number of Sprint Cup Series teams running Dodges had dwindled to just Penske and Robby Gordon. Now that number could drop to zero without Penske. Gordon is looking to sell his team or find investors to keep it afloat.
Team owner Roger Penske previously fielded Fords from 1994 through 2002 with Rusty Wallace leading the charge.
Ford Motor Co. had to offer Penske a pretty sweet deal to leave Dodge, even though “The Captain” said the move is not about money. Penske often talked about the virtues of being the only big-time team for an entire manufacturer, even though other manufacturers found success as more teams joined the fold.
Apparently prevailing assumptions that being on a manufacturer island is a bad thing are true. Penske might have gotten Dodge’s full support, but it still had just two full-time teams to use to gather information. Other manufacturers such as Ford and Chevrolet have as many as seven and nine teams that finished in the top 20 in points a year ago.
Still, Penske did well under the Dodge banner and consistently put cars in the championship Chase.
Just like with driver moves, this move by Penske is going to have a ripple effect throughout the sport. Dodge said it will remain in the sport and will unveil its 2013 Charger next week, but right now it doesn’t have a team lined up to drive those new cars.
People quickly turned to Richard Petty Motorsports as a likely candidate to move to Dodge, and there are decent reasons to think that might happen. RPM’s contract with Ford is up at the end of the season, and Petty has long been connected to the Dodge brand.
But, the Petty organization has had trouble just staying in existence throughout the past several years, and it is tough to think the organization suddenly has the resources to venture out on its own with a new manufacturer.
If they do, the performance on the track could be dreadful. Just think of the 2001-2006 stretch when Petty Enterprises switched to Dodge and never had a car finish in the top 20 in the points standings.
The other factor in this situation is how Roush-Fenway Racing will react to Penske’s move. Owner Jack Roush had been on a decade-long run in which he became Ford Racing in NASCAR. Anything associated with Ford was also associated with Roush. The “Cat in the Hat” might not welcome a new organization with open arms, especially if it doesn’t run Roush-Yates engines.
Penske hasn’t yet said how his organization will handle the engine situation. If Penske Racing runs its own engines, there likely won’t be much information flowing between Roush and Penske. If Penske does run the Roush-Yates engines, then he might as well be in the same position as what RPM is in now.
Either way, it didn’t take long for teams set their sights on the 2013 season even though the current season is only one race old.
With Penske’s move forcing a manufacturer to look for teams, the door is now wide open for all kinds of movement to begin.
Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Ford engines are new leaders in NASCAR
After years of domination by Chevrolet teams, the Ford group has come back with the best start to its season since all five Roush cars made the Chase in 2005.
The Ford camp made this abundantly clear during the past two weeks at Charlotte Motor Speedway where Fords led a combined 319 of the 502 laps run in the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.
Plus, the teams that have dominated the past five years or so had troubles of their own Sunday night. Two favorites to win the Coca-Cola 600, Jamie McMurray and Jimmie Johnson, blew engines.
While they were both driving Chevrolets, they aren’t on the same team and have different engines. McMurray had an Earnhardt-Childress engine under the hood while Jimmie Johnson had a Hendrick engine.
It might not be terribly surprising the Fords have finally come back to the front of the field on tracks where horsepower and aerodynamics are important, but it is surprising to see the failures from the Chevrolets.
The Earnhardt-Childress engines won nine races last season, including all four of the restrictor-plate races, and all of those wins came on tracks that were at least one mile in length.
Hendrick engines also won nine races last season, with Johnson bringing home six of those wins.
The #48 car has been the gold standard in the Sprint Cup Series nearly since it was formed in 2002. The Lowe’s Chevrolet simply never breaks down, but it did Sunday night.
Are we seeing a changing of the guard? Possibly. The #48 team doesn’t always have a great first half of the season, and it likely will be in contention for the championship late into the Chase, if not all the way to Homestead again, but an engine problem combined with the resurgence of Roush-Fenway Racing has the path to a sixth championship a bit more cluttered.
The other aspect to this issue is the Ford engines. The FR9 engine has been in development for several years, and it just started running full time last season. However, the teams running the new engine are reaping the benefits in 2011.
NASCAR recently took an engine from each manufacturer and found they all make similar power. So, where does the Fords’ advantage come from? Maybe it has to do with more than raw horsepower. One feature of the new Ford engine was that it had a lower center of gravity and ran cooler than the old engine.
These factors help with the overall setup of the car just as much as the power to move the car forward. It’s great to have a fast car down the straightaways, but it doesn’t do much good if the car won’t turn in the corners.
So, the teams can use a lower center of gravity to help the car turn in the corners and a lower water temperature allows the team to run more tape on the grill, which gives the car more downforce.
Maybe it’s not so much the Fords all of a sudden have more power than everybody else; maybe they just have the ability to use that power more effectively.
In any case, the Fords are as strong right now as they have been in a long time, and they could hold this advantage for a while as other teams adjust to try and keep up.
The Ford camp made this abundantly clear during the past two weeks at Charlotte Motor Speedway where Fords led a combined 319 of the 502 laps run in the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.
Plus, the teams that have dominated the past five years or so had troubles of their own Sunday night. Two favorites to win the Coca-Cola 600, Jamie McMurray and Jimmie Johnson, blew engines.
While they were both driving Chevrolets, they aren’t on the same team and have different engines. McMurray had an Earnhardt-Childress engine under the hood while Jimmie Johnson had a Hendrick engine.
It might not be terribly surprising the Fords have finally come back to the front of the field on tracks where horsepower and aerodynamics are important, but it is surprising to see the failures from the Chevrolets.
The Earnhardt-Childress engines won nine races last season, including all four of the restrictor-plate races, and all of those wins came on tracks that were at least one mile in length.
Hendrick engines also won nine races last season, with Johnson bringing home six of those wins.
The #48 car has been the gold standard in the Sprint Cup Series nearly since it was formed in 2002. The Lowe’s Chevrolet simply never breaks down, but it did Sunday night.
Are we seeing a changing of the guard? Possibly. The #48 team doesn’t always have a great first half of the season, and it likely will be in contention for the championship late into the Chase, if not all the way to Homestead again, but an engine problem combined with the resurgence of Roush-Fenway Racing has the path to a sixth championship a bit more cluttered.
The other aspect to this issue is the Ford engines. The FR9 engine has been in development for several years, and it just started running full time last season. However, the teams running the new engine are reaping the benefits in 2011.
NASCAR recently took an engine from each manufacturer and found they all make similar power. So, where does the Fords’ advantage come from? Maybe it has to do with more than raw horsepower. One feature of the new Ford engine was that it had a lower center of gravity and ran cooler than the old engine.
These factors help with the overall setup of the car just as much as the power to move the car forward. It’s great to have a fast car down the straightaways, but it doesn’t do much good if the car won’t turn in the corners.
So, the teams can use a lower center of gravity to help the car turn in the corners and a lower water temperature allows the team to run more tape on the grill, which gives the car more downforce.
Maybe it’s not so much the Fords all of a sudden have more power than everybody else; maybe they just have the ability to use that power more effectively.
In any case, the Fords are as strong right now as they have been in a long time, and they could hold this advantage for a while as other teams adjust to try and keep up.
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