Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Dodge plans to phase in new Sprint Cup engine

SCENEDAILY
BY BOB POCKRASS -ASSOCIATE EDITOR


RUSTY JARRETT / GETTY IMAGES

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Dodge officials expect to have a new engine on the track sometime this summer.

The new engine should improve water flow and the ability to make power reliably, said Howard Comstock, Dodge's Sprint Cup program manager.


Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Penske Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing build their own engines. Petty Enterprises uses Gillett Evernham motors.

"We did the initial development in-house at Chrysler and made parts available to the teams," Comstock said. "Now they have got parts, and they can get their engines put together and run them for the first time on their dyno.

"We will get some additional feedback and make some engineering changes as we go along and make sure that everything is solid before the engine actually sees competition."

Comstock said he expects the rollout to be similar to Chevrolet's last season where the engine will be phased in throughout the summer and fall.

With Chevrolet and Toyota having introduced new engines last year, Comstock said Dodge has looked at those engines and learned. Ford most likely is coming out with a new engine in 2009.

Comstock said that Dodge wanted to get the car of tomorrow developed before introducing the new engine.

"We worked a long time on this package," Comstock said. "We delayed the release of the initial parts because we wanted to make sure this one was really better than the one we were replacing."

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