SRT Motorsports announced that Dodge will be pulling out of NASCAR competition following the end of the 2012 season.
Ralph Gilles, president and CEO of Street and Racing Technology (SRT) Brand and Motorsports with the Chrysler Group, said:
We’ve spent an intense five months working to identify and evaluate all options for our future involvement in NASCAR. A number of opportunities emerged, and our team worked diligently to put a structure together to fit our overall business and competitive objectives. While we have been pleased and enthused with the amount of interest from teams and sponsors over that time, in the end, we simply couldn’t develop the right structure.
Penske Racing is the only full-time team that fields Dodge Chargers in the Sprint Cup Series. Penske announced earlier this year that they would be switching from Dodge to Ford.
Dodge approached Richard Petty Motorsports about a possible partnership, but Petty elected to stay with Ford.
The decision to pull out of the sport indicates that no full time team was willing to switch to Dodge because it is highly unlikely the Dodge would put the time, effort, and money into developing a car for the 2013 season if they knew all along that they would be pulling out.
[...] Kurt Busch Speaking With Teams About 2013 Cup Ride By Michael J Smith ⋅ August 30, 2012 ⋅ Email This Post ⋅ Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment Filed Under Furniture Row Racing, Kurt Busch, NASCAR, Phoenix Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, Sprint Cup FoxSports.com is reporting that former Sprint Cup Champion and current Phoenix Racing driver Kurt Busch has spoken with several teams about Cup rides for 2013, with two of those teams being teams that were potential Dodge teams before the manufacturer elected to bow out of NASCAR competition in 2013. [...]