Can’t Wait For 08

Team Mopar®’s roster looks as formidable as ever in the USAC, World of Outlaws, NHRA POWERade and Formula Drift racing series, and will include a new powerhouse entry in SCORE Off-Road competition.

Words: Darren Jacobs

Last year, Mopar® kicked off the racing season by revealing Kasey Kahne Racing (KKR) as its factory-backed team in USAC Sprint/Midget and World of Outlaws Sprint Series competition. In 2008, Rob Richard, Mopar’s Director of Global Parts, Sales and Service Marketing, Chrysler LLC, jump-started the New Year with the announcement that Mopar will take the reins as title sponsor of the 2008 United States Auto Club (USAC) Mopar Midget National Championship. The partnership announcement was made at a joint press conference on Jan. 11 at the 22nd Annual Dodge Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa, Okla.

“USAC is the racing series where legends are born, and Mopar’s recent success in the USAC National Midget Series is proof of that,” said Richard. “Mopar midget engines have had a legendary run in the series, with Jerry Coons Jr. [2006-2007] and Josh Wise [2005] earning Team Mopar three straight USAC Midget championships. With Mopar’s new role as title sponsor, we’ll expand on this success.”

The 2008 Mopar Midget National Championship will feature a 30-event schedule at tracks across the country. The series will visit 10 states and famed tracks including Ohio’s Eldora Speedway, Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway, O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis and the Belleville High Banks in Belleville, Kan. The 2008 Mopar Midget National Champion will be crowned at the season-ending “Turkey Night” event in November at Southern California’s Irwindale Speedway.

Mopar’s defending champion, Jerry Coons Jr., will aim for his third-straight Mopar Midget National Championship behind the wheel of his No. 11 Wilke-PAK Racing midget car. Coons will utilize a Mopar power plant supplied by Gary Stanton Racing. The Arizona native will also pilot the No. 69 USAC Sprint car on both dirt and pavement for the famed Hoffman Auto Racing team, owner of eight USAC Sprint championships and 72 feature wins.

Young Brady Bacon will return for the second straight year to take the helm of the Mopar-powered No. 99 USAC Sprint and Mopar Midget National Car for KKR. He’ll be joined on both series by 22-year old California native Brad Sweet, who will take over the highly-prized seat of the No. 49 ride vacated by Kevin Swindell. Veteran KKR driver Joey Saldana will look to earn his first World of Outlaws (WoO) Sprint championship in his Open Joist/Mopar after finishing a close second, with 13 feature wins, in the 2007 campaign (for more info on the KKR team, check out the Next Gen column in this issue).

A number of other drivers will compete with Mopar power during the 2008 USAC season, including 16-year-old phenom Dakoda Armstrong and 17-year-old rising star Michael Faccinto, the midget car pilot for Gary Scelzi Motorsports.

Hübinette, also known as the “Crazy Swede,” Mopar’s two-time drift champion, will compete under the Mopar banner on the Formula Drift Series for the fifth straight year. Also returning is Shaun Carlson, team owner and team manager for NuFormz Racing. Together, Hübinette and NuFormz have combined to earn the most wins, nine, since the Formula Drift Series was formed in 2004.

At press time, word on the grapevine had Hübinette possibly switching to a new Dodge Challenger drift car in ’08 after finishing fifth and taking one win last year in his Mopar Dodge Charger SRT8.® Hübinette and the NuFormz team will kick off their quest for a third Formula Drift championship starting in April in the Streets of Long Beach event.

Now in its eighth year, the Mopar HEMI Challenge Race Series shows no signs of slowing. Growing numbers of Super Stock/A-HEMI (SS/AH) 1968 Plymouth Barracuda and Dodge Darts owners are taking the challenge and strapping into their HEMI-powered machines to go head-to-head in battle for the HEMI Challenge championship. The 2007 season featured a new stop for the series at the Mopars at The Strip Event in Las Vegas, Nev., and that’s where the 2008 HEMI Challenge points battle will pick back up (the first three points events of the ’08 season were held in late 2007, with Charlie Westcott Jr. leading the 2008 points battle, just ahead of Larry Woo and his father, Charlie Westcott Sr.). The 2008 HEMI Challenge will next head to Louisiana for the NHRA JEGS.com Cajun SPORTSnationals before crowning a champion, along with the $10,000 winner’s purse, at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Ind. The 2009 points race will rev up with 2008 HEMI Challenge events at the Jeg’s NHRA Northern SPORTSnationals, the Jeg’s NHRA Pacific SPORTSnationals and the NHRA Pennsylvania Dutch Classic.

So there you have it—the straight skinny on what Team Mopar has in store in the coming months. And with a lineup as talented as this, Team Mopar is sure to be no stranger to the top spot on the podium in 2008.

At the 2007 SEMA show, Mopar dropped a bombshell when it announced its new SCORE Desert Series team, featuring the Mopar Dodge Ram Off-Road Trophy Truck piloted by the Collins Motorsports trio of Brian Collins, Larry Ragland and Chuck Hovey. The three will carry on Mopar’s tradition in off-road, first forged in the 1980s by Walker Evans and Rod Hall.

The Collins Motorsports crew wasted no time in taking Mopar power to the trail, debuting in the world-famous Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 mere weeks after the SEMA unveiling. Team Mopar’s trail drivers didn’t disappoint, reeling off an impressive Top-five finish in their maiden voyage, finishing 13th overall. The new addition to the Team Mopar roster will campaign throughout the full six-event SCORE Desert 2008 schedule.

Mopar-powered NHRA Funny Car and Pro Stock drivers earned 13 wins on the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series in 2007. They’ll have their work cut out trying to improve upon that impressive mark, but if last year is any indication, plenty of HEMI®-powered drivers will be visiting victory lane in ’08.

Last year, the Team Mopar and Don Schumacher Racing trio of NHRA Funny Car drivers, Gary Scelzi, Ron Capps and Jack Beckman, all finished in the Top-five of the Funny Car standings (Scelzi was third, Capps fourth and Beckman fifth). Scelzi and Capps also qualified for the two-race NHRA Countdown to 1 title shootout. The triumvirate will return for 2008, as Scelzi shoots for his second Funny Car title (he won with Mopar power in 2005) and Capps and Beckman search for their first overall Funny Car championships. Scelzi will once again take the cockpit of his Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T, while Capps will mount the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R/T and Beckman will steer the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T.

A fourth DSR Funny Car driver was announced near press time. Jerry Toliver will turn the DSR trio into a quartet, as he is set to take the reins of the Rockstar Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car in 2008. A husband-and-wife duo will also compete in Charger R/Ts in ’08: Melanie Troxel in the ProCare RX Funny Car and her husband, Tommy Johnson, in the Monster Energy Funny Car.

Team Mopar/J&J Racing Dodge Stratus R/T Pro Stock driver Allen Johnson, the longest-serving member of Team Mopar, posted a career year in 2007, earning a fourth-place finish in the points standings and an appearance in the Countdown to 1 playoff. Yet the Greeneville, Tenn., native is far from satisfied, as his brush with the ultimate goal, an NHRA Pro Stock championship, has left him even more hungry entering the 2008 NHRA Pro Stock season. With horsepower provided by his father and engine builder, Roy Johnson, the J&J team is sure to be among the elite teams on the circuit.

Johnson, along with Scelzi, will sport a head-turning new look on their drag cars with the Mopar “Liquid Metal” paint scheme, new for 2008. First revealed in its initial stages on Scelzi’s Charger R/T at the 2007 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in late October, the design was developed by Mopar and Competition Graphics® of Farmington Hills, Mich., and will serve as the official paint scheme for Mopar’s factory backed cars on the NHRA Funny Car and Pro Stock Series. Team Mopar’s Formula Drift Champion Samuel Hübinette will also sport the new design on his Mopar drift machine.