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Sprint Cup
CUP: Brand identity Not Easy To Achieve
Differentiation still key component for NASCAR’s automotive partners...
Team owner Jack Roush (Left) and Ford Racing NASCAR program manager Pat DiMarco (Right). (Photo: LAT Photographic)
The evolution of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series car took a giant leap forward in 2007 with the introduction of the car of tomorrow.
Yet now, after five years, the four manufacturers find themselves taking a step back in an effort to move ahead.
It’s known as brand identity, and it’s something that will be touted long and loud as Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford and Toyota continue preparations for the rollout of their 2013 models that will hit the race track next season.
The intent is to give each of the manufacturers the leeway to create vehicles for the race track that more closely resemble those that can be found on the showroom floor.
It’s not that simple, though, because at the same time cars that look less alike on the race track still have to produce similar aerodynamic numbers to maintain a competitive balance.
Closing the gap between track and showroom while preserving that balance might not be easy, but as NASCAR has learned, it is important to a large segment of race fans. And to the four current manufacturers involved in its Sprint Cup Series.
“I’d say it’s a necessity from Ford’s perspective in that we’ve heard from the fans and we’ve heard from our employees that the cars of today do not look like the cars that we sell in the showroom,” said Pat DiMarco, Ford Racing NASCAR program manager.
“It’s important for them to see what’s in the showroom on the race track on Sunday.”
Safety First
The car of tomorrow, which debuted in 2007, wasn’t entirely responsible for the move toward what has been termed by many to be today’s “generic” race car, but it did play a large part. With good reason, however.
“From our standpoint, remember that whole process, even with the first ‘ugly’ car ... job one was safety,” Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, said of the development of the COT. “It didn’t matter what it looked like. It was about safety. And then we started to get it a little bit better from there.”
While the car of tomorrow brought with it a multitude of changes, which did in fact lead to alterations in the appearance of the vehicles, the focus was on what was underneath all that sheet metal. And that will continue to be the case going forward, Pemberton said, noting that there has been “absolutely no” consideration given to modifications regarding the chassis design.
“Everybody has been working on that same type of system now ... Nationwide [and Cup],” he said. “That all being the same between the two garages, it will continue to have some positive economic impact for the garage area. ... That was kind of the plan all along – the longer we run the same thing, the better off [for everyone].”
The appearance of the cars, though, had already begun to stray far from their showroom cousins before the new car’s debut. Manufacturers may have been dissatisfied – after all, they pour millions of dollars into the sport – but even with the 2007 change, there remained specific areas of the cars that allowed each to maintain individual brand identity.
“I think at the time, NASCAR pushed their envelope pretty far [with the COT] and obviously had other motives besides getting manufacturer identity – namely safety,” Pat Suhy, NASCAR group manager, GM Racing, said.
“Safety and being able to inspect things at the race track. We got to that point and everyone patted themselves on the back and, kind of in hindsight, we looked at it and said ‘Jeez, we could have done a lot better than that.’ Just in terms of the way the car looked.”
DiMarco said the chassis changes were in the right direction and a move that “obviously helped the sport.” But with so much attention focused on one area of the car, the outside “is where we fell short,” he said.
“I think that’s a natural point to say that that’s where we kind of fell out of love with the car and wanted to return the brand identity. But if you look back at the cars before that, there was no brand identity in them. I mean there was a little bit. But we all thought that they were better looking race cars, so that was OK.”
“If you look at the old car, the 2006 car, it’s amazing to me that people thought that they had more character than the current cars,” Suhy said. “The current cars, you can look at the front end of them without decals and say ‘Oh, that’s a Ford, that’s a Chevy, that’s a Dodge, Toyota,’ whatever. The old cars, without stickers on them, it was hard to tell in some cases. You really had to be an aficionado and I think they had to be sitting still to really see what they were without decals.”
Where To Start?
Fan dissatisfaction and manufacturer concern might have been leading the push to bring back more brand identity, but NASCAR officials weren’t willing to go all in, at least not at the Cup level, until they tested the waters elsewhere.
That came in 2010, when manufacturers rolled out new-look entries in the Nationwide Series for four races during the second half of the season, a precursor to a fulltime rollout this past year.
Two groups, Ford and Dodge, took the opportunity to the extreme, debuting entirely different models in the series. Ford, which had raced the Fusion in both Cup and Nationwide, elected to debut the Mustang in Nationwide while Dodge switched from the Charger to the Challenger. Chevrolet was already phasing in the Impala to replace the Monte Carlo while Toyota’s focus remained with the Camry.
Monumental changes aren’t expected for the four groups on the Cup side for 2013 – Ford officials rolled out its Fusion prototype in January but other are expected to unveil their new-look entries at various times this year – but the opportunity is “a significant move for the manufacturers,” according to Dodge’s Dave Bailey, senior manager, SRT Motorsports Engineering.
“It plays particularly well for the ‘bold look’ of the Dodge Charger,” Bailey said. “We received positive press when we launched the [Nationwide Series] Dodge Challenger and we are expecting to have the same response with the NASCAR Cup Dodge Charger.”
DiMarco said easing the changes in through another series was “the right step,” and that a 2011 change to the cars when a lower nose was allowed, “helped improve the look of the car in Cup.
“Naturally through the process we’re saying we need more, it’s got to be better than that,” he said. “But it was a quick evolution from the old car and the car of tomorrow to where we’re at today in Nationwide and for 2013.”
While talks between NASCAR and the various manufacturers had been going on for quite some time about just what could and couldn’t be done going forward, Bailey said that eventually “NASCAR pulled the brands together and established a launch date that we could all support.”
All For One
Although each of the four manufacturers hope to achieve a look that will further differentiate their individual entries, there remains a common area within which all must fit.
It’s known as the “greenhouse” and it consists of everything above the door line, from the base of the windshield to the base of the rear spoiler attached to the trunk. That common area is tightly scrutinized by NASCAR officials each week at the track, and is a significant component in keeping drag and downforce numbers among the entries as close as possible.
“The going-in position of NASCAR is ‘Yeah, we’re going to let you guys do a lot of brand differentiation, but we’re still going to do aero-matching, we’re still going to have enough common elements on the car that we don’t have people saying they’re at a disadvantage,’” Suhy said.
“Their challenge to the four [manufacturers] was, ‘You guys go off and come up with the common elements of the car. What is the roof and the windshield and the back light and the deck lid forward of the spoiler look like? The side windows’ and stuff like that.
“There are all those elements, plus there is a ring around the perimeter of the car that really defines the overall shape – it kind of helps set them up to all be similar drag, similar downforce. It gives us a really big palette to work on to express our particular model’s design character.”
Yet now, after five years, the four manufacturers find themselves taking a step back in an effort to move ahead.
It’s known as brand identity, and it’s something that will be touted long and loud as Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford and Toyota continue preparations for the rollout of their 2013 models that will hit the race track next season.
The intent is to give each of the manufacturers the leeway to create vehicles for the race track that more closely resemble those that can be found on the showroom floor.
It’s not that simple, though, because at the same time cars that look less alike on the race track still have to produce similar aerodynamic numbers to maintain a competitive balance.
Closing the gap between track and showroom while preserving that balance might not be easy, but as NASCAR has learned, it is important to a large segment of race fans. And to the four current manufacturers involved in its Sprint Cup Series.
“I’d say it’s a necessity from Ford’s perspective in that we’ve heard from the fans and we’ve heard from our employees that the cars of today do not look like the cars that we sell in the showroom,” said Pat DiMarco, Ford Racing NASCAR program manager.
“It’s important for them to see what’s in the showroom on the race track on Sunday.”
Safety First
The car of tomorrow, which debuted in 2007, wasn’t entirely responsible for the move toward what has been termed by many to be today’s “generic” race car, but it did play a large part. With good reason, however.
“From our standpoint, remember that whole process, even with the first ‘ugly’ car ... job one was safety,” Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, said of the development of the COT. “It didn’t matter what it looked like. It was about safety. And then we started to get it a little bit better from there.”
While the car of tomorrow brought with it a multitude of changes, which did in fact lead to alterations in the appearance of the vehicles, the focus was on what was underneath all that sheet metal. And that will continue to be the case going forward, Pemberton said, noting that there has been “absolutely no” consideration given to modifications regarding the chassis design.
“Everybody has been working on that same type of system now ... Nationwide [and Cup],” he said. “That all being the same between the two garages, it will continue to have some positive economic impact for the garage area. ... That was kind of the plan all along – the longer we run the same thing, the better off [for everyone].”
The appearance of the cars, though, had already begun to stray far from their showroom cousins before the new car’s debut. Manufacturers may have been dissatisfied – after all, they pour millions of dollars into the sport – but even with the 2007 change, there remained specific areas of the cars that allowed each to maintain individual brand identity.
“I think at the time, NASCAR pushed their envelope pretty far [with the COT] and obviously had other motives besides getting manufacturer identity – namely safety,” Pat Suhy, NASCAR group manager, GM Racing, said.
“Safety and being able to inspect things at the race track. We got to that point and everyone patted themselves on the back and, kind of in hindsight, we looked at it and said ‘Jeez, we could have done a lot better than that.’ Just in terms of the way the car looked.”
DiMarco said the chassis changes were in the right direction and a move that “obviously helped the sport.” But with so much attention focused on one area of the car, the outside “is where we fell short,” he said.
“I think that’s a natural point to say that that’s where we kind of fell out of love with the car and wanted to return the brand identity. But if you look back at the cars before that, there was no brand identity in them. I mean there was a little bit. But we all thought that they were better looking race cars, so that was OK.”
“If you look at the old car, the 2006 car, it’s amazing to me that people thought that they had more character than the current cars,” Suhy said. “The current cars, you can look at the front end of them without decals and say ‘Oh, that’s a Ford, that’s a Chevy, that’s a Dodge, Toyota,’ whatever. The old cars, without stickers on them, it was hard to tell in some cases. You really had to be an aficionado and I think they had to be sitting still to really see what they were without decals.”
Where To Start?
Fan dissatisfaction and manufacturer concern might have been leading the push to bring back more brand identity, but NASCAR officials weren’t willing to go all in, at least not at the Cup level, until they tested the waters elsewhere.
That came in 2010, when manufacturers rolled out new-look entries in the Nationwide Series for four races during the second half of the season, a precursor to a fulltime rollout this past year.
Two groups, Ford and Dodge, took the opportunity to the extreme, debuting entirely different models in the series. Ford, which had raced the Fusion in both Cup and Nationwide, elected to debut the Mustang in Nationwide while Dodge switched from the Charger to the Challenger. Chevrolet was already phasing in the Impala to replace the Monte Carlo while Toyota’s focus remained with the Camry.
Monumental changes aren’t expected for the four groups on the Cup side for 2013 – Ford officials rolled out its Fusion prototype in January but other are expected to unveil their new-look entries at various times this year – but the opportunity is “a significant move for the manufacturers,” according to Dodge’s Dave Bailey, senior manager, SRT Motorsports Engineering.
“It plays particularly well for the ‘bold look’ of the Dodge Charger,” Bailey said. “We received positive press when we launched the [Nationwide Series] Dodge Challenger and we are expecting to have the same response with the NASCAR Cup Dodge Charger.”
DiMarco said easing the changes in through another series was “the right step,” and that a 2011 change to the cars when a lower nose was allowed, “helped improve the look of the car in Cup.
“Naturally through the process we’re saying we need more, it’s got to be better than that,” he said. “But it was a quick evolution from the old car and the car of tomorrow to where we’re at today in Nationwide and for 2013.”
While talks between NASCAR and the various manufacturers had been going on for quite some time about just what could and couldn’t be done going forward, Bailey said that eventually “NASCAR pulled the brands together and established a launch date that we could all support.”
All For One
Although each of the four manufacturers hope to achieve a look that will further differentiate their individual entries, there remains a common area within which all must fit.
It’s known as the “greenhouse” and it consists of everything above the door line, from the base of the windshield to the base of the rear spoiler attached to the trunk. That common area is tightly scrutinized by NASCAR officials each week at the track, and is a significant component in keeping drag and downforce numbers among the entries as close as possible.
“The going-in position of NASCAR is ‘Yeah, we’re going to let you guys do a lot of brand differentiation, but we’re still going to do aero-matching, we’re still going to have enough common elements on the car that we don’t have people saying they’re at a disadvantage,’” Suhy said.
“Their challenge to the four [manufacturers] was, ‘You guys go off and come up with the common elements of the car. What is the roof and the windshield and the back light and the deck lid forward of the spoiler look like? The side windows’ and stuff like that.
“There are all those elements, plus there is a ring around the perimeter of the car that really defines the overall shape – it kind of helps set them up to all be similar drag, similar downforce. It gives us a really big palette to work on to express our particular model’s design character.”
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