NASCAR met with representatives from all three manufacturers earlier this month at Dover to discuss the “facelift” to the trucks for 2014.
The changes to the trucks come after NASCAR overhauled the Nationwide Series and introduced Pony Cars in 2010. This season, after six years of fans despising the Car of Tomorrow, the Generation 6 was introduced. So what about the trucks?
“Trucks are a little bit trickier for us because we’re not afforded some of the foundations with trucks that we have for the cars meaning the common or the consistent or the certified chassis,” said NASCAR Sprint Cup Series director John Darby, who attended the meeting.
“The Truck series still has a lot of variances and frames and chassis and all that which makes it a much more difficult project because you want an end product that is controllable and very cost efficient for the truck teams. At the same time, we don’t have an interest of tearing up every truck in existence.”
That’s a bonus for the Truck teams many which lack the sponsorship dollars or significant contribution from the series’ purses to exercise a complete overhaul of their inventory. As the lone full-time Truck team owner in the Ford camp, Brad Keselowski Racing will be responsible for the F150 build. Keselowski calls the project “an interesting situation.”
While the manufacturers will design the latest concepts and develop the trucks, Turner-Scott Motorsports will construct the Chevy Silverado and Kyle Busch Motorsports will handle the Toyota Tundras.
As a driver/owner who regularly competes in the Truck series, Busch would like to see some aerodynamic changes to the new trucks. Darby says he’d like to have all three trucks in the wind tunnel for base-line testing in the next two months before they are actually on track tests.
“The project is actually moving forward pretty nicely with a very nice aesthetic result,” Darby added. “It’s goal is to do the same thing that we’ve done with Nationwide and the Gen 6 Cup car, [which] is to put the correct look of the truck back into the trucks. (Fox Sports)
