Dodge to race new engine this year

Tommy Wheeler, Engineering Services Director for Gillett Evernham Motorsports said on Tuesday that the new power-plant is still being developed on the dyno and expects it to enter its on-track phase of running next month.

"The bulk of our work right now is being done on the engine dyno," Wheeler said. "We're doing that so that we can really monitor not only the global performance of the engine but how much performance does it loose in the course of a race, what goes wrong first.

"It's ultimately what we're looking for and then when we fix that problem we look for what causes the grief next and so forth.

"So, most of our testing has been confined to rig test or dyno test, and I expect that to continue probably for the next month. Then, I'm really eyeing the month of August to be on the racetrack a fair bit and try to really start pushing this thing forward at least in testing."

Wheeler said Dodge has focused on the cooling of the engine and its overall weight as well as horsepower as the main areas where it expects to see a step forward relative to the current engine.

"I think the single biggest area where it's going to be improved is perhaps in the water flow and in the mass overall weight of the engine," Wheeler added.

"The Dodge engineers, working hard with all the Dodge teams have done a great job of understanding that it's very important to have improved coolant flow because we're trying to run these engines so hot these days."

The new engine, according to Wheeler, has marked differences to the current one in terms of its installation and is not easily changeable back and forth.

Dodge expects to make a gradual implementation, starting with some races this year, which it is expected to make with those teams not running for the championship.

"I still think five, six, maybe even ten races I think that's realistic before the season is over," he said. "We want to learn as much as we can about this engine as quickly as we can because we're optimistic it's going to be a performance improvement."

Gillett-Evernham's Kasey Kahne is currently the only Dodge driver in the top-12 in the driver standings.