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Robby to Chevy in 2011!
From Jayski : Robby back to Chevy: #7-Robby Gordon says the Chevy-to-Indy move is just perfect for him, and he says he'll be a part of the new Chevy Indy operation. Gordon is preparing to run next spring's Indy 500 with his own team (it will of course have to be with a Honda engine). And Gordon says he expects to make the NASCAR jump next season from Toyota back to Chevrolet. Gordon, who heads back to Mexico in a couple of days to run the Baja 1000, says he's one of five men with a shot to win the 16-hour marathon. But it hasn't been such a great year for Gordon, who last year's off-road championship but who this year has been hit with mechanical issues, most recently with his off-road transmission."
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by alan4s on
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That Mike Mulhern article also says John Menard owns the Illmor engine shop that will be building the Chevy Indy engines. I wonder if they'll do a Chevy Nascar motor too? They were working on Penske's Dodge motors before Penske sold to Menard.
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Permalink Reply by Hmsdude24 on
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Very interesting observation alan, that would make some sense for sure.
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Permalink Reply by ShaneH on
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I may be wrong, but Menard purchased into Ilmor Engineering, Ltd which was the original Ilmor out of England which GM, Penske, Morgan, and Illien created. Penska and Illien repurchased the rights to the Ilmor name and it's associated US engineering and production operation in the US in 2005. I've been involved in some testing with Ilmor and Mastercraft on marine engines and that's how I understood it as of late 09.
So if that's still the case, which Ilmor operation is GM working with? None of the information out there differentiates that.
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I'm not sure, but this is what Mike Mulhern wrote in his article. I'm assuming he knows what he's talking about.
The announcement said that Ilmor, the long-time engine operation, will be dropping its current Honda Indy-car program and moving to the new Chevy program. Ilmor engineers have been working on some of Penske's NASCAR Dodge stuff this season.
However Penske no longer owns Ilmor; that part of his portfolio was sold to John Menard.
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I think Mulhern needs to check his sources. Here is a quote from Penske himself this week, which shows that he shopped Ilmor's services to GM and that he's still involved in it. You don't shop the services of a multimillion dollar company with hundreds of employees, as he says, without being a principal in the corporation.........................
"ROGER PENSKE (Founder and Chairman, Penske Corporation): Ilmor was the team to partner with Honda to build the current racing engine. Honda made the decision going into 2012 that if there was going to be a new engine they wanted to do that on their own and not utilize Ilmor, so at that point, being a shareholder of Ilmor, I said let's go out and look for a world-class manufacturer that might be interested in partnering with Ilmor from a technical standpoint and a support standpoint.
We went around to various manufacturers, and Chevrolet showed some interest. They were interested in understanding the rules, and the committee got together with them.
My role was to introduce Ilmor to General Motors once again, and we've had success with them, and, obviously, committing to running the engine again in our cars over the next several years.
(Ilmor) rebuilt this year at least 20 engines that were in the field every weekend. It will be the same transparency that it has been. We just decided that we could help the series, and we had a couple hundred people that needed the jobs.
So there was real incentive for us to see Ilmor survive and be in the business, and what a great partner we've found."
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You're right Shane. Penske is still a part-owner of Ilmore. Mulhern had his information wrong. I can't find any info on any relationship between Menard and Ilmore Engineering here in the US. Menard was a principal in the Buick Indy car motors, which were also V6's, but that program ended long ago, and had nothing to do with Ilmore.
The Ilmore Engineering website doesn't look like it's been updated since 2008, so there's not much help in details there either.
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Permalink Reply by The Captain on
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Menard "Owned, Sold earlier this year" Menard Engine Group, not ilmore. Nobody remembers the horrible Menard engines Rob had in 05? and later changed to DEI becuase of reliablility. Though they were rumored to be turning 11K RPM ????
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Permalink Reply by 7gason7 on
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Yup, RG was downshifting on the backstretch at Pocono in 05 and no one could believe it..
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Permalink Reply by james heggemeier on
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More good NEWS !! Being a robby fan for so long Im not used to all this good news at the same time.
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