I'm not a big NASCAR fan but I do watch...I caught the end of yesterday's (Sunday the 26th) race at Fontana, CA and I'm pretty sure that an SSR was the pace car for the race...does anybody but me think it odd that a model that's being discontinued is being used as the pace car?

I don't know much about how a particular vehicle gets chosen to be a pace car in Nascar but I would assume the manufacturer pays a hefty price for that honor.

If so, I don't understand why they woudl use an SSR?

If anyone knows more about this I'd enjoy hearing it!

 

I think at the some of the smaller, more "run of the mill" races (i.e. not the Daytona 500, Indy 500, Brickyard 400, etc.), the pace car isn't such a big deal.

I could swear that I've seen regular Monte Carlos pacing some of the more "regular" races. They make a big fanfare about which car is going to do Indy every year, but that doesn't seem to be the case for every race. As such, I think the SSR is as good as anything else. Retro style, kinda truckish, 400 hp V8 with rear drive, etc.

I see where you are coming from, though.

 

I think its a dumb move not to have the Z06 pacing every race. They've used SSRs I guess for almost 3 years now and they look dumb and goofy.

Personally I would have liked to have seen the Z06 run flat out with one of the race cars at Daytona last week, just like on the back straight.....with the cars plate-limited to 450hp and the Z weighing 300 lbs less I think it would have run away from one of the Cup cars

 

It's not as odd as some of the Dodge teams like Penske, for example, racing a 2 year old body style Intrepid instead of the "new" Charger body style.

 

The drivers were probably sad after last week when the pace car was actually more powerful than their cars

 

That'd be cool!

 

I guess it is better than the Asstek pace car they used for awhile

 

Well that's not all that odd, actually... it's not up to the individual teams to decide when they can change "models"...it's not at all ususual for NASCAR to use body styles for a while even after they aren't in production anymore.

That may be why, if memory serves, NASCAR is going to a new generic design they are introducing over the next two or three years.

 

The current car is already generic. They went to a "common template" body in 2002, so now all the sheetmetal on the cars is the same except the front bumper...perhaps some character lines in the hood, and the shape of the rear side glass.

The new car under development, aka the Car of Tomorrow, takes this one step further and is supposedly larger/taller in the greenhouse area to increase drag, reduce speeds and improve racing/passing.

When Pontiac left the sport a couple years ago several teams continued to run the GP body that next year. So its not all that unusual for teams to reach back and run an older body. As long as it fits the templates and rules, its legal.

 

A team has a period of time to choose, true, but the Charger is being run, just not by Penske.

 

Newman was running an Intrepid at Fontana.

 

pics of this INtrepid last weekend?

 

Yep. Both Penske cars were "Intrepids" and not to mention LaBonte in an "Intrepid" for Petty Racing.

For my eyes they more resemble a Stratus. What do I know.