I have heard & read several times that NASCAR's plan is to have all of its "regional" racing series including the Canadian Tire Series standardized on the Grand National rules, i.e., the Car of Yesterday chassis. This in part was to provide the Nextel Cup and, eventually, the Busch Teams with a outlet for their obsolete equipment when the COT is mandatory.
Unless there is some change of heart, this is still the plan. If so, I think it should be done sooner rather than later. There are Teams out there who might be more interested in buying an old Nextel cup chassis to join the CTS but not in buying and upgrading a CASCAR chassis that will be obsolete in a couple of years. In an ideal world, the OSS & the Western Series would be the home for old CASCAR chassis.
I have also heard that NASCAR is looking at a composite body instead of steel.
Southernsponsor, I think all the folks at NASCAR are great people and come to the table with allot of experance in Racing across the Country. As far as no rule changes go... in 2006 NASCAR told all of us to build our cars for 2007 using the 2006 Rule Book as there would be no changes to the cars making the transition to NASCAR. In 2007 at our first meeting we were also told no rule changes.
In March of this year 3 members of NASCAR Tech came to my shop for a half a day, inspecting, suggesting, and measuring. I asked then again, are there any rule changes and they said no, but they did tell me they were going to rewrite the rule book to make it easier to read.
Two weeks later out come the rule changes we had to do to the cars.
After that when they continue to say no rule changes I find that statement hard to believe, although if its safety related I agree with any change.
As far as 1 piece bodies go, this is a huge step in the WRONG DIRECTION and they need to take several things into consideration before they make mistakes.
A- The cost of the body, add on all Dutie Fee's, Customs fees, Brokerage fees, and taxes.
B- The cost to ship the bodies to Canada- They can only get 2 bodies in a trailer for shipping.
C- Body repairs- You smash a Fender and the car is parked until the body is fixed. With Tony's bodies you smash a fender you throw it away and rivet on a new one. In 20 min. your back racing.
D- The cost to restructure all body hanging bars and pick up points.
Here is my take- NASCAR needed to continue the Sportsman Series so they had a place for teams to sell of any changes that were going to be made to the CTS cars. That is why the Busch Series works so well with the NEXTEL Cup Series, they have another home for parts and cars. If they are considering the change to the CTS cars becoming upgraded to the current NASCAR Cup car then they need to start the Sportsman Series NOW !!
mid we have two sportsman series now. it is a fact that we would have loved some help in feb-may 07 but that did not happen. we have the oss and seimens west with a little help from nascar and talk between ron lethbridge and my self maybe we can keep the rules mirrored with a few difference such as tires. the one thing that will not happen in the west is a switch to 10" tires while i am tech director. souternsponser, i find your faith in nascar a little scary, if i and several other had waited for nascar there would be nothing in the west, same story with ont. and mr lethbridge and his crew. nascar now has the chance to show their mettle step up and help these two series. to this point we have had little or no contact with nascar. we as racers must learn to stand on our two feet. we are so busy fighting ourselves that we seem to be happy for the scraps from nascar's table. loose quote from another movie. mid the movie your quote is from is a few good man. how many credits do i get now.
Here is a link to Fiberglasses bodies developped for NASCAR GRAND NATIONAL DIVISION (NASCAR BUSCH EAST SERIES, etc.)
http://www.summitracing.com/motorsports/nascar/index.htm
http://www.eastseries.com/features/060909slaughter.html