Future Car Equals Big $$ NASCAR will unveil its new car at Talladega
By Mike Mulhern JOURNAL REPORTER
DOVER, Del. - In just a few days NASCAR will roll out the first version of its proposed "car of the future," in what is set as a major test at Talladega the day after the UAW-Ford 500.
But several top stock-car team owners are upset over the latest twist in NASCAR's long-running five-year push toward the proposed new car, and a showdown is looming.
The "car of the future" is a slightly taller, slightly wider racer that is supposed to be both safer for drivers and easier for inspectors to scrutinize. It is now scheduled to debut in February 2007 and to be run at every race that season.
Why the angst? Owners said it will cost from $3.3 million to $4.3 million per team to build the new cars, which they said will have to be brand new from the ground up. A few pieces can be carried over, the oil system and the gauges, but almost everything else will have to be new, including the chassis, roll cage, rear-end assemblies, transmissions and suspensions. The owners also said there is no significant market for resale of their current cars.
With 43 teams on the grid, that's a potential cost of about $170 million, plus the loss of the current fleet.
And owners this week are asking, 'Why?'
How many Nextel Cup cars are there in North Carolina shops? Each team has from 16 to 20 cars, a total of 650 to 850 cars, all instantly obsolete upon the introduction of the car of the future. And that's not even including the massive numbers of show cars that each team carries.
The magnitude of that expense has become very clear to the team owners, who said they will likely be in a bidding war for good mechanics for this massive project, which would kick off in earnest next summer. Crew chiefs said they would have to have at least eight new cars built and ready to roll at the start of the 2007 season, and they worry NASCAR will drag its feet on too many crucial fine-print rules.
On top of that, throw in the still-unclear Toyota factor. That manufacturer is expected to join the Nextel Cup tour in 2007. And it won't have to do anything in 2006 except design, build and test Nextel Cup cars for the next season.
sounds like they are trying to give Toyota an edge coming in.
I thought they were supposed to gradually work the new cars in........four races this year, ten the next, twenty the next, and finally all races would use the new car. or something like that.
