BRIAN WOLFE RATIONALIZES HARD TIMES AT FORD RACING

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Perhaps we shouldn't throw rocks at Ford Motor Company's factory racing efforts. After all, we could someday be repeating the disasterous mistake of November 1970, when Lee Iacocca, Red Poling, and Henry Ford II and their anti-Knudsen hatchetmen killed off virtually the entire "Total Performance" motorsports program.

Still, to see a solid, hardworking Ford "lifer" such as Ford Racing Boss Brian Wolfe have to dance around justifying Ford's cutbacks in motorsports is hardly entertaining.

Wolfe's budget has been slashed by nearly FORTY PERCENT in recent months.

Wolfe, attempting to justify giving over control of the NASCAR Nationwide and Camping World Truck series to Toyota, said:

In NASCAR, it made us focus on Cup and Cup exclusively," Wolfe said. "In the truck series and the Nationwide series, we backed away from a lot of our, if not all of our financial backing, although we're still offering technical assistance to insure the cars perform as well as they can on the track, and a contingency program where we reward some people for that."

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"It wasn't like it was unforeseen and we had to tear up our plan and start over," Wolfe said. "That's why we were putting our focus in NASCAR on the Cup Series and (why) we're staying in the NHRA, primarily focused on the Funny Cars and the sportsman racers who work with us so well and do so much for us."


"I couldn't be happier with the performance of our teams this year," Wolfe said. "We don't have as many teams (as other manufacturers), but I've learned long ago it's the quality of the teams you have and the qualify of the guys you've got working for you that make a big difference.

Of course, perhaps the greatest year for Ford Racing in the modern era was 1992. Nearly two-thirds of the Winston Cup field were Ford Thunderbirds. And not boring, common-template NASCAR-designed "funny cars," but Thunderbirds that actually looked like production Thunderbirds.

Three Ford teams battled down to the last laps of the season for the Winston Cup Championship, which was won in dramatic fashion by "Underbird" Alan Kulwicki.

During 1992, Jack Roush's Fords were the midst of their incredible decade of dominance in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Ford also had factory presence in Formula One (Michael Schumacher took his first F1 victory in a Ford Cosworth-powered car), World Rally, Indy Cars (the XB Cosworth won six races in its initial season) and various forms of sports car racing.

Now, while NASCAR and big-time international motorsports "dust and glory" is less frequent these days (excluding WRC, of course), Brian Wolfe's crew are making do in spectacular fashion with vibrant production Mustang-based Grand Am, Miller Cup and NHRA Cobra Jet programs, and a strong (but too small) Ford Racing Performance Parts operation.

Hopefully, Mr. Wolfe will continue to have success in making the case to Ford's bean counters and "appliance motorist" greens in the Glass House that motorsports is essential to Ford's very survival as a manufacturer.

And maybe someday, Ford will see fit to revisit the incredible "Total Performance" era (or at least the 1992 echo of it).