Full Throttle

As NASCAR enters it’s “chase to the Chase” segment of the season - and with only six events til it’s official start - lets us pause for a moment and reflect on the new Dodge Charger and the soon to be Ford Fusion. At this point the Charger has not lived up to it’s winning tradition with only Kasey Kahne’s May win at Richmond and Ryan Newman’s continued pole winning efforts to appease the “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” crowd that infests the corporate board rooms..

The lack of performance can be attributed the dominance of the Roush Fords and to a lesser extent the Hendricks stable of Chevy’s. Another factor are the shear numbers, the Dodge teams are simply out numbered. The numbers should become more balanced if the Evernham and Ganassi teams add cars to their stables as rumored.

There is been some design issues with Dodge as well. The configuration of the Chargers grill lead some to believe it contributes to an overheating issue. I’m of the belief the grill is more than sufficant and the teams are using way too much tape looking for downforce. The root cause probably can be traced to the internals of the engine, but who am I to judge, I haven’t torn down a Hemi in 35 years. And don’t intend to start at this late date.

But their are people that are intimately involved and with the introduction of the new Ford Fusion some changes have been made in how things are done.

Ford Racing aerodynamicist Bernie Marcus and NASCAR field manager Ben Leslie handled the physical development work on the Fusion racer. This is in stark contrast to the development road followed with the 1997 Taurus, where Penske Racing South was contracted to be the lead team responsible for this effort. The idea was to let the teams concentrate on the week-to-week racing while Ford worried about the future. “It’s a philosophical difference from how we did things in the past,” says Dan Davis, director of Ford Racing Technology, “but we now have the internal capability to handle more of these projects, and take some of the load off the teams.”

Leslie, Marcus, and Ford body specialist Jerry Painter went to the teams late last year and asked them for their ideas about the new car. They took a poll of the issues the teams were struggling with, and compared these notes to create a matrix of common concerns to be quantified before wind tunnel work began. Most of the work concentrated on the nose and tail sections to retain at least some resemblance with the production Fusion while developing a package that would be competitive on all of the tracks NASCAR runs.

The trio will be working with the teams throughout the season to refine the shape and keep pace with changes made up and down the pit lane. However, this is only some of the work they will be doing during the year. The greater part of their effort will be spent designing a completely new NASCAR Fusion to go with the sanctioning body’s rules changes for the 2007 season. That car will be taller, and carry over little of what has been learned during the past decade of racing in terms of aerodynamics. But at least the headlight, grille and taillight decals will probably remain unchanged.

Ford fans take note of the highlighted section. If the Fusion comes out of the box and runs like a three legged dog, remember the teams got what they asked for, much as all the teams got when they requested a “softer” Goodyear tire. Now that tires are popping like cheap circus balloons no one wants to admit they had any part in it.

If I were to guess, the Fusion teams won’t face nearly as many teething problems as the ones running the Charger. Dodge had only been back into [avatar:http://cranialcavity.net/files/cup.jpg]NEXTEL Cup[/avatar] a few years before retooling again with the new Charger. Ford doesn’t have that disadvantage and have a much larger data base to work from.

Here’s another thing to keep in mind. Remember the days of Ford, Chevy and Pontiac and how hard it was telling one brand from another as they streaked by your TV screen? With out the familiar paint schemes you were hard pressed what brand was what. Now with the Charger and the new Fusion and their distinctive grill designs the phrase “cookie cutter” bodies is almost relegated to the dust bin. At least until 2007, then it’s a whole new ball game.