Ford Motor Company had been all in on sending the Mustang to the Sprint Cup when Nascar redesigns the cup car for the 2013 season but now they have announced that they are going to stick with the Fusion. They claimed that they wanted to continue to have the Mustang as their iconic brand car in the Nationwide series, but I think that Ford didn’t want to spend the money to help develop the Mustang in the Cup series. I’d bet you a bunch of cash that Chevrolet is going to come with the Camaro in 2013, their number two muscle car behind the Corvette, so why in the world would you come back with the family car? The new Ford Mustang looks awesome in the Nationwide series but the fan base for that series is a lot smaller than the cup series so why not have the muscle car in the top series? I don’t want to dump on the Nationwide series but when it comes to putting people in the seats and viewers in their recliners the Cup series is king. In my opinion Ford is more concerned with selling the Fusion than the Mustang maybe because the fusion isn’t selling as well as the mustang. I’m just guessing so I may be way off but as a fan of the Ford Mustang it will be embarrassing to see the Fusion go up against the Camaro.
Some news from the Whelen Modified series, Ryan Newman has been disqualified from the July 16th Nascar Whelen Modified series race at New Hampshire motor speedway for rules violations. Newman’s Modified car was confiscated by Nascar after the race and taken to the R & D center for further inspection and it was there that it was found that the intake manifold did not seal completely to the heads. It seems that crew chief Mike LaRochelle used metal shim type gaskets on the intake, which are not permitted by the Nascar Whelen Modified tour. I don’t know much about intake performance but it must have been something hot because crew chief Mike LaRochelle has been suspended from all Nascar regional touring events until December 31st 2011 as well as car owner Kevin Manion being suspended in the same way. There have been fans commenting on blogs and news sites over complaining that it was just sorry that a big time Nascar driver and car owner had to cheat to beat the poor little touring series guys. I didn’t see anything about fines so I’m pretty sure that Newman and company are not all that concerned with it as they don’t really run that car all that often. The penalty apparently is pretty strong, as I read through blogs about it I find that stripping a driver and crew chief of a win after the fact is a pretty big deal. There must have been some real advantage to the metal shim intake gaskets.
There is no Sprint Cup race this weekend but both of the lower series are in action at the Nashville Super Speedway this weekend starting with the truck series on Friday night. Nashville is a 1.333-mile D shaped oval with 14 degrees in the turns and I believe a concrete racing surface. It is owned by the Dover Motorsports Group, the same people that closed Memphis and Gateway, so this is where they are putting half of their marbles now, split between Dover and Nashville. There may be a light on at the end of the tunnel over there at Dover Motorsports Group as they announced that there will be reduced ticket prices for this weekends racing, I tried to look and see what the prices were but couldn’t get into the track’s web site. If they are successful at getting people in the stands at Nashville this weekend I will get off their back to a certain extent but on the flip side of that it will mean that they really didn’t care about the fans in Memphis and the St. Louis area because they didn’t budge on the ticket prices for either of those tracks in their waning seasons. I am biased for Gateway because that track is an hour away from me so I hated to see it go away. The action on the track was fantastic, it was just built in a bad location; next to a huge garbage dump and on property that already housed a NHRA drag strip and the Nascar track was built on the existing parking lot so parking and traffic became a nightmare. My only hopes are that someone with a lot of cash buys Gateway and fixes the problems. I’m not bitter just disappointed in what I feel was gross mismanagement of two great racing venues. I’ll be watching the races at Nashville this weekend because I love the action but I will also be paying attention to amount of fans in the seats. I’m curious as to how much they chopped the ticket prices.
Stay Safe out there and get out and see a race. Try a short track and support the roots of Nascar.
TW
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