Peter DeLorenzo over at Autoextremist.com has been running a three-part series on the future of NASCAR. His inside information about meetings between the major manufacturers has led to some stunning conclusions on his part that point to NASCAR making the kinds of changes that wayward fans have been crying for over the last decade: production bodies, motors, and technology. According to Peter D. all those things are on the way, and sooner rather than later.

According to DeLorenzo, NASCAR’s top leadership, including Brian France, has looked over the edge and seen their fate if they continue on the current course of racing a series of cars completely devoid of a relationship with actual production cars.

In the final piece in his three part series, DeLorenzo claims that, by 2012, NASCAR will look nothing like it does now. The cars will be similar in look to the GT class cars that were just racing at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and they will have to be based off of a rear wheel drive production car. That’s no sweat for Ford, Chrysler, and GM, but Toyota has no RWD production model currently, so that may be interesting. In theory, Hyundai could get involved as well, as could other companies like BMW. We see this as being a US version of the German Touring car series or Aussie Super Car series and that would not be a bad thing in our eyes.

He claims that the series will be running on a “bio-fuel” by the time this landmark shift happens (we assume Ethanol).

Our hope is that they will have to run production based engines. That would totally rule and would instantly rekindle old rivalries if the engines were actually close to something that could be found in a passenger car. We’d be all over that like a bum on a ham sandwich.

DeLorenzo paints a very interesting picture for the future of the sport. We love the way it looks. How ’bout you?

Thanks to BangShift.com member Mr4Speed for the tip!

Source — Autoextremist.com — Setting the table for a new, more relevant NASCAR