taken from maxchevy.com

MC: Chevrolet has been pulling back in the sport compact drag racing series and I wonder if you would talk about that…

FS: We haven't pulled back, we've changed our involvement, but we haven’t pulled back. Quite frankly, if you look at the budgets from the last several years from the engineering side, they are the same; however, we've changed the way we spend the money. We used to have two factory in-house race cars driven by Marty Ladwig and Nelson Hoyos and that was in the development years with the Ecotec engine and front-wheel drive racecars. It was the most efficient and effective way for us to get up on the learning curve in a hurry, rather than do a normal team support program, which we do for each series. This year, we don't have any in-house factory race cars, they are all independently owned and operated and we provide team support, just like we did with Kurt Johnson and Tony Stewart, no difference.

MC: Can you see a continued involvement for Chevrolet and General Motors in the sport compact series?

FS: Absolutely. We are not making many 60-year-old people out there buy big blocks to put in street rods. What we've got is young men and women, tuners if you will, that like small engines, preferably 4 cylinder and then maximize horsepower. They like front-wheel-drive vehicles as opposed to rear-wheel-drive. It’s good business for us and that's why we are there. We have a Performance Build Book we put together -- I don’t know how many thousands of those we've sent out in paper copy or CD format on how to take an Ecotec engine from a stock 140-horse engine and multiply times 10 to 1400. How fast do you want to go? How much money have you got?

MC: Do you have a crate motor program as well for the Ecotec engine?

FS: You can get a crate motor Ecotec engine right now that is fuel injected or the LSJ supercharged crate engine and the LSJ motor. Even for the stock guys that buy the Cobalt SS supercharged, we have a Stage 1 and Stage 2 kit that you can buy right from Chevy to pump up the horsepower.

 

Very nice to hear this sort of thing. It keeps the hope alive.

 

the hope for what?

 

What this means is that if GM is in for Sport Compact, so is NHRA and NOPI.

 

gm is sick i think its amazing they would do all this

 

 

Fred is a really cool guy.

 

i was just talking to a reputable division 6 super stocker, and i heard some of the comp classes are allowing fwds next year.

i seen the h-t post about this being a possibility about two weeks ago, it sounds like it went through