It is official: after the 2012 season, a Mopar powered legend will withdraw from America’s motorsport. At the conclusion of this year’s running, Dodge will stop its NASCAR efforts in both the Spring Cup and Nationwide classes. The announcement was made by Mr. SRT himself, Ralph Gilles, who stressed that the decision was not the easiest to make. Following the declaration by Penske Racing that Dodge would no longer be their weapon of choice, the automaker came to the conclusion that a proper NASCAR structure would prove far too costly to continue.
“It’s an extremely difficult decision to know that we won’t be there for our fans next season,” said Gilles. “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.” Across the past five months, Dodge and SRT worked hard to evaluate all potential options for further involvement in NASCAR. In the end, both the Spring Cup and Nationwide efforts were determined to simply not fit with Dodge’s “overall business and competitive objectives”.
Dodge will continue to race in this season’s running of both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series races. Given the automaker’s long history with the motorsport, it will be sad to not see a Charger or Challenger hug the outer banks of Talladega or Bristol. Since 2001, Dodge has taken 55 victories in the Sprint Cup Series and in 2010, the Nationwide Series championship was captured by Mopar muscle.
Source: Dodge
