Chrysler still committed to NASCAR
December 31, 2008 by Negative Camber
Filed under Other Racing
With Honda, Suzuki, Subaru, Audi pulling out of their respective racing series, you can imagine that NASCAR is facing some daunting issues as well with the big three all in trouble. But Chrysler says they are still committed to NASCAR and in it to win it…sort of.
“We’re not going to pull out. We are going to throttle back,” Mike Accavitti, head of motorsports, told Reuters. “NASCAR is not exempt from anything else that we do to market and promote vehicles.
“We have to reduce our spend. We have to get our expenses in line with our revenues. The market right now for automobiles is at a low point that hasn’t been seen in decades. As we resize the company and resize our expenses, our NASCAR spend is not exempt.”
good call there Mike.
They are goign to reduce spending by 30% next year which means the Dodge teams will be even LESS competitive in 09 and they barely showed up in 2008.
didn’t I just read that Petty was closing shop or merging?
Unfortuantely yes
Petty will “merge” with GEM and become Gillette Petty since Ray Evernham has left the company and bought a dirt track. Petty Enterprises which has been in NASCAR sinc 1949 will essentially close. The 43 will most likely be driven by Reed Sorenson (which means it will suck) and Richard will still be involved. This is really a disapointment. Nascars website has some great articles that list the accpmplishments of Petty Enterprises over the years as well as the sad times. It didn’t matter if you were a Earnhardt, Gordon, Stewart fan. When the 43 led everyone cheered.
Anyway it sucks