(Lead photo: Greg Simpson) Watching the downward trend in Australia’s automotive scene has been one bitter pill to swallow, and we are hearing news that isn’t making things any better: As reported by Motorsport.com, Ford Performance head honcho David Pericak has ruled out the possibility of any funding making their way into V8 Supercar racing.
During an interview with the Australian motorsport site motoring.com.au, Pericak tells the site, “People want us to race nearly every category around the world and we just can’t do that. Where we participate needs to be a good return on our investment and what we are trying to achieve with racing. We are not racing just to race. We are racing to make sure we learn, we develop new tools and we develop our engineers. And obviously we use that to bring it into the product development of the cars we put in peoples’ driveways. So that is a series we have decided doesn’t fulfil all of those needs and that is why we have decided to exit that series.”
Roger Penske will continue to provide support for Ford racers, but right now, all bets are off of the table as to what happens to V8 Supercar racing. Mercedes no longer has a car running in the series, Volvo Polestar’s appearance in the series is up in the air, and as for Nissan…who knows. There are supposed to be 26 cars racing in the series this year, but until the season kicks off in earnest, don’t hold your breath.
I can understand ford’s standpoint when you are racing in a series that basically uses a kit car that uses a lot of parts common to every car on the grid, why race in series where your not using and developing your own product, rule makers and series organisers be warned
Keith’s comments also describe nascar