It would be tough to find anyone in the NASCAR industry who isnt happy with the look of the new 2013 Sprint Cup car .
The only problem is trying to get enough parts and pieces to build them.
Teams are scrambling as they try to build cars for the 2013 season, with the words hood and decklid making crew chiefs cringe.
NASCAR decided late last year that it would switch to carbon fiber hoods and decklids for the new car. Each manufacturer is producing its hoods through a vendor (it is considered a piece that must come from the manufacturer) while NASCAR decided that all decklids the only piece of the bodies that are the same for each manufacturer must come from the same source.
But getting those pieces has been a challenge for teams.
The shortage of hoods and decklids has put nearly every team behind in building cars for the 2013 season. More than a dozen teams had to leave last weeks three-day test session at Daytona early after a 12-car wreck damaged several cars . Most of those teams didnt have backup cars and many teams left the test because of the fear of wrecking or damaging their only Daytona car.
Michael Waltrip Racing crew chief Brian Pattie said Thursday that each of the three MWR teams has only six cars built so far compared to 10 at this time a year ago.
The decklids are being produced by Composite Resources, a Rock Hill, S.C. company that primarily works in the aerospace and military industry and which won the contract through a bidding process. The company is active in sportscar racing, owning Core Autosport, which competes in the American Le Mans Series.
The company can make at least 50 decklids a week and this past week was able to boost production to 70, according to owner Jon Bennett.
We started production of the decklid in mid-December, Bennett said in an e-mail. Production has been on a steady ramp up since we started. We know the teams need decklids ASAP to provide ample time to get their racecars built for Daytona and races that follow.
For the moment, we are following NASCAR's lead on production targets and releases to teams. Our production has steadily increased from 12 decklids on week one to our current 50-plus per week.
Bennett said the company is working around the clock six days per week (three shifts a day) and expects that type of production through February.
NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said that up until this week, the decklids were being distributed equally among Cup organizations no matter how many teams each organization had. Starting this week, decklid distribution is based on the number of teams the organization plans to field in 2013.
With approximately 100 decklids being produced every two weeks and about 35 full-time teams, that means those teams would get about three decklids per organization every two weeks. The decklids are the same no matter the type of track teams run at, so teams dont need different ones for different tracks.
The decklid is an area that is very important to the car, Pemberton said. Over the past few years, it was becoming a science project, whereas if a decklid can distort a certain way during a run, during the afternoon, it generates more downforce.
That being said, then they became a piece that was only made for a race or two races, then it was thrown out. So that got to be labor intensive. It was not predictable. It wasn't fair for some teams that had more resources than others that could afford to do that week in and week out when other teams could not.
As far as the manufacturers, they are trying to work with their teams to get them enough hoods. The carbon fiber hoods had to go through strength and fire-resistant tests at NASCARs research and development center and that approval process took time and slowed down manufacturing.
Because of the strict approval process and because it is a structural piece, NASCAR also wanted to have limited vendors in order to ensure the structural integrity. That spurred the decision to have each manufacturer choose one vendor, said Toyota Racing Development Sprint Cup manager Andy Graves.
Five Star Race Car Bodies is making the hoods for Chevrolet, Roush Industries is doing them for Ford teams and Crawford Composites is manufacturing them for Toyota. All of the manufacturers have had long-standing relationship with those companies.
Toyota teams are getting a minimum of eight hoods a week and Graves decides who gets them. Teams have requests in for how many hoods they need.
Theres a series of things, not all of them fall on NASCARs shoulders, Graves said. A lot of them fall on ours as well in wanting to make sure we have a product sufficient for the track.
Its tight. Supply is limited right now. Its uncomfortable for the teams and we understand that and we apologize to them for our portion of the delay.
Graves estimated that each team (car) would need at least 10 hoods to get through the season. A team could take a hood that is damaged and see if Crawford will repair it instead of the team having to buy a new one.
Chevy Racings Sprint Cup program manager Alba Colon said Chevrolet has distributed hoods to all of its teams and it depends on the situation of each team as far as how many they get. She said every team has a schedule of when they will get hoods.
Trust me everything will be OK, Colon said. The teams are getting the hoods and they will have plenty of hoods. That is not an issue. Everybody is a little bit anxious but it will be OK. We wont be having this conversation in five weeks.
Graves said he believes Crawford has added extra shifts and by mid-March, the Toyota teams should be well-stocked with hoods.
We felt it was more important to take the time, to make sure all the rules were 100 percent correct and were going to be the best for the series in the long term rather than rushing through it early on, Graves said. Thats created a lot of heartburn and some issues for the teams.
We understand it. Its not great, but once we get through the first couple of months of the season, we wont hear about those issues anymore.
Ford officials declined to comment for this story.
I dont think theres a reason for people to be worried or concerned in the industry, Graves said. Weve been running the same car since 2007 and theres been this huge supply. Now all of a sudden, theres a radical, different approach to how we construct bodies, the shape of the body, some of the materials the bodies are made out of and it took longer than any of us wanted to settle in on the rules.
