Mustang To Race NASCAR?

What? This makes no sense, although it seems like a great idea. I thought the roundee-round boys from NASCAR were all about mid-sized sedans? Coupes at the very most (or at least things that look like coupes). If you start getting into anything sports or "sporty" NASCAR hasn't been very interested in it for many a decade. What gives?

For starters, this is coming from FoMoCo itself, and it has the backing of NASCAR. Ford says that to hype its performance division, they will introduce a Mustang-esque race car in the NASCAR Nationwide Series later this year. So that's NOT in the premier class of the Sprint Cup series. Ford also says that the design will share no mechanicals whatsoever with the production Mustang since it has to comply with NASCAR’s regulations, it will only "approximate" the appearance of the street car.

So why is Ford doing this?

According to Brian Wolf, Ford North America Motorsports director, “We had been talking with NASCAR for some time about Mustang as part of its vision for a ‘muscle car’ rollout for the Nationwide Series. We both saw it as a way of differentiating the series from Sprint Cup.”

OK, seems reasonable enough, marketing and all that.

Ford also adds that it has jumped through all the hoops in the approval process with NASCAR (and why, oh why, does their name have to be all caps? It sounds like I'm shouting whenever I type it) for the new racing version of its Mustang and that production of the parts will begin once templates provided to race teams are finalized.

FoMoCo says that the first cars built by NASCAR Nationwide Series teams should begin testing later this fall. And if the anticipated Dodge Challenger-body NASCAR racer sees the light of day, the muscle car wars in NASCAR-land should be on track.

Source: LeftLaneNews, photos from Flickr users Ford Racing, Simon Davison and omniNate.