NASCAR Grand National Series - A New Direction

The spec engines come from Provident Auto Supply, a North Carolina distributor owned by Gary Nelson, former NASCAR champion crew chief, Nextel Cup competition director, and retired head of its research and development center.

Price is $25,000 out the door, ready to drop into an engine bay and fire up.

"Some teams opt to buy the parts and build their own," says Mark Johnson, who works for Provident. "It saves them $2,500 and they have control over how they go together."

The spec engine begins life as a General Motors LS2 block, normally found in a Corvette. It uses GM heads and other off-the-shelf components. Buck says every manufacturer was approached about providing the spec engine platform, but only General Motors offered to sign a contract.

The script on the valve covers changes based on what chassis the engine is bolted to.

"There's not a lot of fancy stuff that goes into them," Johnson says. "But they put out good power and last a long time."

Buck says dyno numbers are almost identical for the spec engine and the traditional 18-degree built engine.

"Any variation is about what an engine builder would normally expect with motors coming out of his shop," Buck adds. "Generally, they are within about 1 percent of one another."

As the 2007 season opened, the spec engine was in about half the cars fielded in both the East and West Series.

It appears to be a big success in both areas. Matt Kobyluck relied on a spec engine to power his Mohegan Sun Resort Chevrolet to his biggest career victory, winning the prestigious NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown last October.

Sellers says the spec engine has cut his powerplant cost by 75 percent.

"They cost half as much as a built engine and they last twice as long . . . maybe more," he says. "They are good for about 1,200 miles, where the built motors need to come out after about half that."

"It's a good program," says McAnally, who fields more cars in the West Series than any other owner. "There were a lot of guys who couldn't afford to run this series until NASCAR changed the rules."

His BMR cars are a mix of steel and composite bodies

We don't simply take a steel body off a car," he says, "but if the body gets busted up enough that it needs major repair, we'll replace it with the composite body."

He says the body cost is about half of the price to shape and hang sheetmetal on a chassis.

A few teams cling to the steel bodies, saying they can put more rake into the car and generate more downforce with metal versus fiberglass.

McAnally also has switched over entirely to the new spec engine.

"They are competitive with built motors on everything but price, and then they are way ahead," he says.

He predicts more teams will be coming into the series in the next few years as the price of used Nextel Cup chassis goes down.

"With NASCAR switching entirely to the Car of Tomorrow next year, teams will be dumping their old cars just to make space in the shop," McAnally says. "They are going to go really cheap."

That's good news to guys like Sellers, who has only a single car.

"I'd like to have a second one," he says. "But it's not in the budget right now."

McAnally understands. It wasn't too many years ago he was a driver/owner of a one-car team.

"This is an expensive sport," he says. "But the changes NASCAR made have really helped keep the cost down. I know not everyone was happy with what they did, but the series is a lot better for the decisions they made."

Buck says one of NASCAR's goals is to maintain a stable set of rules.

"The feedback from everyone involved, from the one-car driver to the big teams, is not to mess with things," he says. "For the little guy, it is a case of keeping the sport economical. For the teams like Gibbs, they are so focused on the Chase for the Championship they can't afford to devote a lot of time and resources to a development series."

Buck says that by keeping a tight lid on the rules and controlling the costs, success won't necessarily always go to the team with the most money.

"The idea is to give drivers and crew chiefs and mechanics a place to learn and grow and develop their talent and skills, not to spend outrageous amounts of time and money," he says. Jfboone@aol.com