Dodge officials say interest overwhelming to replace Penske as flagship team
By Bob Pockrass/ScencDaily | Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:10 PM EDT
LAS VEGAS – Dodge has let the public see its 2013 Sprint Cup car, a more sporty looking version than the current Dodge Charger campaigned in NASCAR.
Now all Dodge needs is someone to drive it and someone to build engines for it.
A week after Penske Racing announced it would drop Dodge for Ford, Chrysler’s SRT Brand and Motorsports CEO Ralph Gilles said the company has no plans to leave the sport and hopes to have its 2013 Sprint Cup lineup primarily solidified by mid-summer.
Following the unveiling of its 2013 Sprint Cup car – a project that took “thousands and thousands” of Dodge man-hours, according to Dodge’s Howard Comstock – Gilles spoke about the future of the company in NASCAR.
With Penske announcing it would not renew its contract with Dodge and had signed with Ford, Dodge has no organizations signed for 2013.
“It’s been overwhelming the amount of interest and discussions of people that want to be in our cars, so we’re excited by that,” Gilles said Sunday while standing in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway victory lane.
“We’re activating [with marketing displays] at 19 races versus six last year. We’re actually investing in NASCAR more than ever. Some of this timing was unfortunate. … The momentum doesn’t go that way [of us leaving].
We’d love to stay if we could. But we’ve got to figure it out.”
In the last 12 years since it re-entered NASCAR, Dodge has had several teams, including Bill Davis Racing, Evernham Motorsports, Petty Enterprises, Chip Ganassi Racing and Penske Racing.
But since 2010, Penske has been the company’s only major organization to field a car. Dodge gives limited support to Robby Gordon Motorsports.
Penske has aligned with Dodge for 10 years but with its contract expiring, unexpectedly made the switch.
“Based on the way our phone is ringing, I’m not too concerned,” Gilles said. “It’s been a pretty positive thing. With every storm, there’s a sunny day later.
“It was unexpected, to be honest with you, but we’re ready for it. We’ve been knocked down a few times in our history and we’ve come back.”
In announcing the move March 1 to Ford starting in 2013, Roger Penske said one of the keys to the deal was Ford’s ability for a longer-term deal.
Gilles said Dodge wouldn’t offer Penske a five-year deal.
“We weren’t willing to do a five-year type of deal just because we wanted to stay loose a little bit,” Gilles said. “That’s all I can say on that matter.”
Gilles said he was not sure how many teams Dodge would want in 2013 and whether it would continue having one flagship team and a group of partially supported organizations such as Gordon.
As far as which teams it will target, Gilles would not say. It seems obvious Dodge would love to get Richard Petty back in its fold – much of Petty’s career was defined by his driving a Dodge – and another possibility is
Furniture Row Racing, which has several ties to Dodge with former Evernham employees in key roles.
“We’re keeping all of our options open,” Gilles said. “We’re kind of putting a list together and setting up meetings in the coming months. We also have to look at the whole business strategy of how we approach NASCAR.
“This is an opportunity to look at the business model very differently and go from here.”
Gilles didn’t believe finding an engine builder will be an issue. Dodge has done much of the engine design.
“It’s really more the facilities,” Gilles said. “There’s a lot of capacity out there. It’s just a matter of making the right decision.”
Comstock, who oversees the NASCAR program for Dodge, said the company won’t fall behind in development of the car even though it doesn’t have a Cup team to work with it simultaneously. Dodge still must submit the car for official 2013 approval but has worked with NASCAR in the car’s development.
Gilles said they worked with Penske “hand and glove” on the 2013 car but Dodge owns all the rights to the parts and pieces of the car.
“We, Dodge, have developed the car to this point, so we’ve still got all of our people working on the prototypes of this car every single day,” Comstock said. “That [Penske leaving] part of it hasn’t really affected us at all.
“The track testing stuff is a little bit later in the cycle. We’re still working on the final design features and the aerodynamic stuff – most of that’s wind-tunnel testing and scale model testing.”
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