MC: Is the 427 small block, currently found in the ZO6 Corvette, in any way derived from Chevy’s drag racing involvement?
FS: The LS7 came more from a road racing involvement I think. We had the 427 small block out there several years ago with our ALMS (American Le Mans Series) program, with Corvette racing and obviously it found a home there in the Z06. Stay tuned because we've got some surprises coming down the road with the Z06.
MC: Could we see a Z06 factory car in Stock Eliminator?
FS: Maybe, I would say it's a 2 or 1-percent chance. We're trying to keep the Corvette in road racing, that's its heritage, that's what it's done the best at over the years, from a marketing stand point. But that doesn't mean we don’t have an awful lot of Corvettes out here drag racing, whether it's Super Gas or Comp Eliminator, there are a lot of them, but the Corvette’s Z06 forte is in road racing. We are doing other things on the Chevy NHRA support side and not the least of which is funny car bodies with the Monte Carlo. We've got Pro Stock Cobalts out here, we're supplying blocks, heads, bodies, parts to Pro Stock and Comp racers. It's a totally different look here at the NHRA. The Corvette is aimed more at road racing.
MC: Since you mentioned the Monte Carlo funny car body, how does that benefit Chevrolet?
FS: Keeps our name out front, it's got a Bow-Tie on the nose, it says Chevrolet on the header decal. Again, you win on Sunday, you sell on Monday. And you look at all the other cars and we've got Ford street roadsters out here with Chevy small blocks under the hood. People understand what the drill is.
MC: Chevrolet is involved in other motorsports, such as circle track, SSCA, dirt track racing…are there people who are similar to what you do in all those venues?
FS: Absolutely, not only do we have a marketing person for each series, but then there is an engineering program manager for that series, too. Here at NHRA, our engineering group manager is Dan Engel. Now, is he an aero specialist, no, we've got specialists to handle aerodynamics, but when he sees a need to do aero work, whether it's the Chevy Cobalt Pro Stock body or the Monte Carlo funny car body, he walks 10 feet away and taps Dwight Woodbridge on the shoulder and says, “We need to schedule a wind tunnel test.” So, we've got a vast amount of resources back at GM that we can tap into, managed by that engineering manager for each series.
MC: Is the expenditure from General Motors equal for all series?
FS: The spending is different across every series. One thing is the price of having a presence in every series is radically different. What you want to do is get the return oninvestment. If we spend a million dollars and we get two million in return, that's a good deal. If we spend 10 million and get 20 million, it's a good deal. It's a sliding scale and you basically spend what you need to accomplish your business objectives. For example, here at NHRA we've got two major objectives: one is to win the Manufacturer's Championship and secondly to win the Pro Stock driver's championship. So if we could do it on $100,000 a year, the financial people would love us. We can't, so we have to spend a little more money than that.
MC: I know that GM has been really involved with Pro Stock safety and it seems you are most interested in Pro Stock safety.
FS: We've got a big investment in the Pro Stock category, so that's why we spend more time with that category from a safety standpoint. But having said that, yesterday, our safety manager Tom Gideon was over with Del Worsham fixing a seat to make it more comfortable for him to drive his Funny Car after his incident Friday. So, he works Funny Car and he works Pro Stock, and just this morning, about 30 minutes ago, I was with Don Prudhomme talking about safety in Top Fuel dragsters. So safety goes everywhere from Stock to Top Fuel. We just tend to concentrate a lot of effort into Pro Stock because that's where our biggest investment is. A car is a car and things you do in one category go to the next category pretty easily. For an example with SFI Spec 38.1 the HANS device becoming mandatory in 2007, we’ve been pushing that for a long time, which will help every driver out here.
