France: 'Industry never more united for growth'

There are some big changes on the horizon for NASCAR.

They just aren’t all going to be unveiled this season.

During his “state of the sport” address Thursday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, NASCAR Chairman Brian France said 2012 would be more about building on the success and positive trends started in 2011.

“The sport is in a very good place and we’re going to work even harder to achieve the very best things for the sport of NASCAR well into the future,” France said on the final day of the Sprint Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“We expect to have another highly competitive battle for the championship this year with our biggest stars and many new faces in the mix.”

Tony Stewart won his third Sprint Cup championship in dramatic fashion in the series finale and NASCAR saw increases in TV audience and in attendance at many tracks.

There are some changes coming this season, however.

The Cup series will move to the use of electronic fuel injection this season, but that’s a change unlikely to be noticed by fans in the stands or watching on TV.

NASCAR has already been hard at work trying to entice teams to return to the more traditional “big pack” racing at Daytona and Talladega, rather than the two-car drafting tandems which became commonplace in the last year.

NASCAR had teams test several ideas last earlier this month at Daytona and recently issued to teams the rules package for the Daytona 500. Changes could still be made up to the day of the race, if needed.

The biggest and most distinctive change coming to NASCAR won’t be on the track until the 2013 season, but the move to more traditional-looking stock cars will receive plenty of attention – and on-track testing – throughout 2012.

“I can tell you that the industry has never been more united to growing the sport of NASCAR on everyone's behalf,” France said.

“And that's going to be our job.”

The work already completed on the new car design – Ford is the only manufacturer to unveil is car thus far – was part of an unprecedented collaborative effort between NASCAR and the manufacturers.

“This is certainly a milestone in our sport,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition.

"We’ve worked very closely with the manufacturers on the new car and the four new models are simply outstanding.

“I think the fans are going to love them and it is going to be such a positive step in helping our race cars become more and more relevant with our fans – past, present and future.”

NASCAR President Mike Helton credited a lot of the change coming to the car design to improvements in technology.

“Designing products or using different forms of technology for us to regulate a fuel injection system, where we were 10 years ago afraid of going down that road because of fear of not being able to regulate it – NASCAR is embracing technology to make rules and regulations,” he said.

“Just the technologies of fabricating parts and pieces that are now more common in NASCAR than they might have been 15 years ago led us to the ability to create the 2013 car with the manufacturers.”