NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
BRICKYARD 400
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
CHEVROLET CENTENNIAL AND GM RACING UPDATE PRESS CONFERENCE
JULY 29, 2011
Jim Campbell, Chevrolet’s U.S. Vice-President Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, and Mark Kent, Director, GM Racing, met with the media at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday and discussed the launching of the celebration and special events surrounding the Chevrolet Centennial as well as an update on the progress of the 2013 Chevrolet NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Car, Chevy’s return to IndyCar and Team Chevy in Grand-Am. Here are highlights from the press conference.
JIM CAMPBELL: “Indianapolis Motor Speedway holds a special place in the heritage of Chevrolet. Louis Chevrolet, our founder, raced at the Speedway and in 1920 Gaston Chevrolet won the Indy 500. His face is on the Borg Warner trophy. It shows you how far back Chevrolet goes with racing and this special place for us.
“Chevrolet went on develop many classic cars. As you may have seen as you walked in is a 1914 Chevrolet called a Baby Grand and it was something for the day. By the way the speedometer goes all the way up to 60 miles an hour.
“If you look at our history around technology and innovations, one of those innovations and technologies of the day was the small block V-8 in 1955. That changed everything. That changed performance. It changed racing. It changed how people could modify a base engine that had great performance, durability and value, but make it their own and do it in a way that enhanced performance for themselves. There are a number of other technologies that we have delivered to the market. Chevrolet advanced the development of the automatic transmission. In the day, it was quite impressive. In addition, direct injection, turbo charging.there are many other technologies.
“Now we have the Chevrolet Volt sitting right outside the media center. This is a quantum leap in technology, innovation. It is really the next chapter of automotive technology. It is incredible because of in part, the electric battery. There is enough energy in there to propel the vehicle about 35 miles without using any gasoline and without emitting any emissions.
“Chevrolet is a global brand that sells in over 140 countries. We have sold over 200 million Chevrolets since 1911. It is one of the fastest growing brands globally. In the first half of 2011, Chevrolet has sold over 2.3 million units and that is a record for Chevrolet.
“November 2, 2011 is the 100th anniversary, the centennial celebration for Chevrolet. So we have kicked off the 100 days celebration a few days, at 100 days until we hit November 3, 2011. We have a website that houses all the Centennial Celebration activities, Chevy100.com.
“One of the things we are going to ask our customers and fans to do is to vote on their favorite Chevrolet of all time. We are going to use a bracket approach. In September we will identify and declare the most popular Chevrolet of all time.
“Chevrolet has its own station on Pandora. There have been hundreds and hundreds of songs that have incorporated Chevrolet or individual brand names into the songs. We are running the top 100 on the Pandora station.
“On August 20, 2011, Chevrolet will be sponsoring the Woodward Dream Cruise. It is a day for people to bring their classic cars and trucks and vehicles back to Woodward Avenue in Detroit and to celebrate those special vehicles. Those designs, the power, the technologies. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson will help us kick that off on August 18, 2011. On August 20th, the same weekend as Michigan International Speedway, we will be joined by 1.5 million of our closest friends join us at Woodward Avenue and about 50,000 of which many are Chevrolet owners and fans and many are Chevrolet vehicles. It is really exciting to see that.
“Chevrolet is really focused on giving back in conjunction with our dealers who have a history of giving back to their communities. We are going to team up with our dealers around the country in a number of ways to give back, one of which is going to be making strides against breast cancer. You are going to see a lot of activities in the next 90 days to that end.
“For the media, if you have more questions or need more information on the Centennial Celebration, you can go to media.gm.com and we have and update there as well.”
MARK KENT:
“It’s a pleasure to be with you today to have this opportunity to provide you an update on some of our various racing programs from a technical aspect. In each of the series in which we participate, we try to satisfy three key objectives: 1) the use of alternative fuels; 2) the use of relevant technology; and 3) the ability to demonstrate product relevance between the race car and the street car. In NASCAR competition we are very excited that we are making great progress in all three of these areas. As you all know this year on the alternative fuel front, NASCAR introduced ethanol-based fuel. Next year, on the relative technology front, the introduction of fuel injection. To help our teams with this introduction, we’re providing our teams with technical guidance based on our extensive knowledge of fuel injection, not only in our production cars, but also drawn upon our experience in various other racing programs where we use fuel injection. So from our perspective, that transition is well underway and moving forward positively.
“The Car of Tomorrow was introduced basically with the key objective of being safe. I don’t think anybody in the room will disagree that that car is a very safe car. But the problem is that it left a little to be desired in the area of product relevance. The templates on the car left little room for the manufacturers to incorporate their styling cues into the vehicle. That’s all going to change come 2013. We’re currently working on our new 2013 Sprint Cup car that’s going to greatly enhance that connection between the race track and the street car. We’re working hand-in-hand with NASCAR as well as the other manufacturers participating in the series; developing a set of rules that will allow the manufacturers to have much more styling identity into the race car without sacrificing safety and without sacrificing the great close racing we’ve all grown used to with the new car style.
So our 2013 program is fully on track. We are nearly complete with the design of the vehicle. We’ve built a full-size model. We’re currently testing that model in the wind tunnel to make sure it meets all of our objectives.
“While some of the other manufacturers have announced the models with which they’ll be competing, we haven’t done so. And the reason we haven’t done so is because we have yet to unveil the production version of the car we’re going to race in 2013.
“So, therefore, I can’t provide you with any more guidance today on what we’re going to introduce in 2010; but what I can tell you is when you see the 2013 race car next to the 2013 production car, the resemblance is going to be striking. I think everybody is going to be impressed with the car that’s going to be on track in the year 2013 from Chevrolet.
“Inasmuch as we’re here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I’ll give you a brief update on our IndyCar engine program. We were here last November and introduced that Chevrolet that was going to return to IndyCar competition. And immediately following that announcement, we began a very aggressive program to develop and build and provide engines for the start of the 2012 IndyCar season. I’m glad to be here today to inform you that everything is on track for that program. Our first IndyCar engine did fire up last month and we’re currently on the dynamometer testing that engine. It’s met every one of our objectives to date and we’re looking forward here in the third quarter to getting that engine into a new chassis and start our testing program in the fall of this year. We’re very excited about being here at this track in 2012 with IndyCar.
“And we’re also very excited in things that are coming next year, like Grand-Am coming to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Chevrolet is very excited about that because we area a big player in the Grand-Am Series. We have multiple Daytona Prototype (DP) teams that depend on the power of the legendary small block Chevy engine. We also have multiple GT class teams that are competing with the new Camaro. So we’re very excited about seeing all those products on track next year. And from our perspective, 2012 is going to be a very exciting season in NASCAR, in IndyCar, and in Grand-Am.”
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS WITH JIM CAMPBELL AND MARK KENT:
MARK KENT: ON THE 2013 NASCAR SPRINT CAR, DO YOU ANTICIPATE YOU’LL BE RUNNING THE SAME OR DIFFERENT PLATFORMS THAT YOU DO IN NATIONWIDE AND CUP SERIES?
“We constantly look at our production portfolio and what we do on the track to enhance our ability to market the product. So that’s under study constantly and we’ll see where that leads.”
GIVEN THAT YOU CAN’T SAY WHAT MODEL YOU’RE USING FOR THE 2013 SPRINT CUP CAR, DO YOU HAVE A TIMETABLE IN MIND WHEN YOU THINK IT WILL BE UNVEILED TO THE NASCAR COMMUNITY?
JIM CAMPBELL: “I would say the timeframe would probably be early next year because we’ll time that along with what’s been done on the production side and want those to be very close together. We want to be close together because when you look at the cars, they’re going to be close together in terms of their style etcetra. So it’ll be early next year.”
WHAT WILL YOUR TEAM LINE-UP BE FOR INDYCAR NEXT YEAR?
MARK KENT: “We’re working on that. We’ve spent the last several months getting to know each of the IndyCar teams and giving them the opportunity to get them to know us. We’re developing our team line-up as we speak and should be able to announce that in the near future.”
About Chevrolet: Founded in Detroit in 1911, Chevrolet celebrates its centennial as a global automotive brand with annual sales of about 4.25 million vehicles in more than 140 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. The Chevrolet portfolio includes iconic performance cars such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long-lasting pickups and SUVs such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers such as Spark, Cruze, Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including Cruze Eco and Volt. Cruze Eco offers 42 mpg highway while Volt offers 35 miles of electric, gasoline-free driving and an additional 344 miles of extended range. Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com ce5&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.chevrolet.com%2f> .
