August 12, 2012
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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It was a heartbreaking week for Dodge fans.
After what has seemed like months of writing going up on the wall, Dodge announced this week that they will be leaving NASCAR after Homestead in November.
“Clearly, this is an extremely difficult decision to have to share with you, our media partners, and also our employees, our fans and at-large, the NASCAR community. Anyone, in fact, who likes to see the Dodge presence in NASCAR,” announced Ralph Gilles, Street and Racing Technology (SRT) Brand and Motorsports, Chrysler Group LLC President and CEO on Tuesday. “Following our thorough five‑month process of evaluating our future involvement in the sport, we have decided to withdraw from NASCAR competition at the end of the 2012 season.”
Gilles admits that the slow downfall of the brand in the sport began when Evernham began its slow fold into what has begun Richard Petty Motorsports, and Dodge became reliant on Penske racing for its presence in the sport.
“Really this issue started many, many years ago as we consolidated down to one team. We had a very, I would say, an elegant situation with the Penske group, having an one‑stop shop, an engine, everything, a very high‑quality team to work with. When that changed, the equation changed dramatically. As you know, being in this sport over the last few years, just like anything in America, things have consolidated, right.
Since their return to NASCAR, Dodge has won the Daytona 500 with Ryan Newman, and has been in the Chase all but one season. But even those accolades are not enough to provide Dodge with the performance they have desired in what has become a Chevrolet-dominated sport of late.
When Penske racing announced in March that it was dropping Dodge in favor of Ford, which appeared to be the first nail in the coffin of Dodge in NASCAR. SRT has spent the last five months trying to find another home for their redesigned Charger, hearing pitches from smaller teams across the sport that would be willing to trade manufacturers in an effort to gain Dodge’s support.
However, we have seen through the smaller teams on the track these days that without the ability to reach out and lean on feedback and support from multiple teams, no matter how hard you try, it is difficult to succeed against the Chevrolet and Ford -- and even Toyota -- based teams. And when you expect quality at a high level in the sport, not getting it is a hard pill to swallow.
“It's not as easy as you would think to configure a team at the level that we are accustomed to racing and at the level that we want to perform. And everything that we do business in, we like to do it as well as possible. So, not undermining the people that came to talk to us, at the end of the day, it's really a big machine to put together to do it right,” explained Gilles.
So, the decision was made that instead of running a small team and try to make them powerful, they would just pull out of the sport completely.
Of course, this is not the first time that Chrysler has pulled out of NASCAR.
When rules seemed to throttle the ability of the Chrysler and Plymouth Hemi engines in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Chrysler pulled their brands from the sport in 1977, and stayed off the track until teaming with Ray Evernham in 2001 to bring Dodge back to the sport. Since that return, Dodge has had 55 trips to Victory Lane, including a Championship in the Nationwide Series -- thanks to Brad Keselowski.
Gilles admitted during his press conference this week that just because Dodge is pulling factory support from the sport, that doesn’t mean that there might not be a Dodge on the track next season, especially since they have already had the specifications for the new Charger approved by NASCAR. However, it is fairly unlikely that a small team could afford to run that new look car completely on their own, with no support from SRT at all.
Dodge fans, like any other manufacturer based fan in the sport, are extremely loyal, and in many cases unwilling to transfer that loyalty to any other brand in the event they have lost the ability to root for their own on the track. At a time when NASCAR is desperately trying to bring more fans in, and keep the fans they have, this isn’t just a cut at the diversity of the teams on the track; it is just another door opening to provide an exodus for fans of the sport.
Hopefully it won’t take another 24 years for Dodge to return to NASCAR. I don’t think the sport can afford to have them gone for that long -- not if the sport as a whole is to successfully survive the loss of the manufacturer AND it’s fans.
Follow Kim on Twitter: @ksrgatorfn
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