Graham Rahal and Dale Jr. to swap rides (2nd Update)
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| Chevy says Dale Jr. has not asked to drive an IndyCar. Is he afraid? |
Chevrolet has not received an official request from Dale Earnhardt Jr. to swap race cars with Honda driver Graham Rahal.
Earnhardt and Rahal are both sponsored this year by Army National Guard, and Rahal reached out to Earnhardt last week via Twitter to see if NASCAR's most popular driver was interested in swapping cars.
The Twitter conversation sparked tons of fan interest, and the guard said it wanted to be part of a swap. But Earnhardt quickly quieted the talk two days later when he said he could not drive a Honda. Chevrolet and Honda are direct competitors in the IndyCar Series.
Jim Campbell, the U.S. Vice President Performance Vehicles and Motorsports for Chevy, said Saturday the manufacturer would consider any proposal to drive an Indy car from Earnhardt but until then, any talk about a manufacture conflict is premature.
"If we get a proposal, we'll take a look at it and we'll look at it with an open set of eyes. The rest is hypothetical," Campbell told The Associated Press. "Broadly speaking about any Chevy driver that is currently on our roster, if they decided to go race in another category or series, of course we'd love to see them in Chevys. There's no doubt about that.
"In some cases it works out like that, and in some cases it doesn't." More from AP Story
03/26/14 Dale Earnhardt Jr believes that conflicting engine manufacturers would be the biggest barrier to his proposed ride swap with IndyCar driver Graham Rahal.
Rahal reached out to Earnhardt about the possibility of the pair testing each other's cars via Twitter last week, and was surprised to receive an immediate and favorable response from the NASCAR star.
But while the pair share a common sponsor in the National Guard, Earnhardt said that his affiliation with Chevrolet and Rahal's alignment with Honda would pose a problem.
"I'd have to drive a Chevy," he said on Tuesday.
Rahal admitted that he had not expected Earnhardt to respond so quickly, and remains convinced that the PR potential of such a stunt would be enormous.
"I was surprised he responded," he said. "Of course, I felt with the National Guard that it could potentially happen. But I also thought it would be something that would be fun to do.
"There's been a lot of Cup guys jumping in an IndyCar. Kurt Busch is going to be doing it in the month of May. Jimmie Johnson and others have been interested.
"Getting Earnhardt and a Rahal … I think the last time those two names were on the same track were the IROC days with my dad [Bobby].
"It would be good to go back out there and see what we could do, have some fun." Autosport
03/23/14 NASCAR’s most popular driver and one of IndyCar’s most prominent Americans appear to be getting in position to become the latest stock car/open-wheel combo to perform a high-profile ride swap.
Rahal (as well as girlfriend and NHRA racer Courtney Force and her father, 16-time Funny Car champ John) was in attendance for today’s Auto Club 400 one week before he begins the new Verizon IndyCar Series season in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Afterwards, he reached out to his fellow National Guard-sponsored driver about the possibility of swapping rides – and it seems that Earnhardt was open to the idea.
The two National Guard drivers exchanged these tweets:
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