Press release from 2005.

Richmond, VA - There has been much speculation about the reasoning behind USAC’s move to the new Silver Crown car that was introduced at the Performance Racing Industry trade show this past winter. Some stories circulating have gone as far as to say this is the beginning of USAC being bought out by or assimilated in to NASCAR.

With Bill France, Jr. in attendance for the big USAC television announcement today, the opportunity was ripe for clearing the air on a few issues. The Vice Chairman of NASCAR and Chairman of International Speedway Corporation spoke frankly with USAC Live on several issues.

France addressed the NASCAR relationship early in the conversation. While he has obvious ties to both companies, his position was that this was very much an ISC initiative.

“This is not so much NASCAR related but ISC,” noted France. “ISC is in the racing business and NASCAR can only provide you with so much product that you can sell tickets for, sponsorships, what have you.”

The prevailing sentiment was that ISC needed more product and they were faced with several options. The most attractive, and probably least time consuming for ISC, looked to be to help develop the current USAC Silver Crown product in to a Series that could perform at more of their venues.

“Do you start something brand new or take something with all the history behind it and try to expand it a little bit? They are running now up to the mile tracks,” commented France. Currently the Silver Crown Series competes at two ISC tracks, Phoenix and Richmond, down from three in previous years when they also ran the now shuttered Nazareth Speedway. He continued, “With the new car and the SAFER walls, we can grow the Silver Crown Series up. It has a great name and we are going to go from there with it.”

The luke warm reception to the new direction of the Silver Crown Series had some people questioning whether or not USAC would go through with implementing the newly designed car in 2006. This idea was roundly shot down.

“We’ve got a commitment to the series and the car. If we have three cars or two cars we are going to run it and grow it. It may be exhibition races, we aren’t going to charge if we have three cars out there.”

When questioned further about the lack of activity from the current crop of Silver Crown owners, France showed concern but remained steadfast in his commitment.

“If there is a slowness with some owners who want to sit and wait to see how it is going to work and that sort of thing, that may be. But we are going to kick this thing off with a big push and we are going to continue to run them. We can afford to do it and we are going to do just that.”

Arguably the most powerful man in American Motorsports, France was quick to remind the level of success that the Grand American Road Racing Series has achieved in relatively short order.

“Anybody that paid attention to our sports cars series knows that we started off with just a few of the cars, the Daytona Prototypes, and now we have grown that to about 25 cars at every race now. It has taken a couple of years but we are prepared to do what we need to do.

From all indications, the new car is going to be part of USAC’s future. Whether or not the pit area resembles the current one in terms of car owners and drivers seems to be the only question at the moment.
Big Frown