No, crossovers aren’t coming to NASCAR’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, but...

John Probst knew something was up based on the emails and messages he was getting through LinkedIn.

NASCAR’s EVP and chief racing development officer had given an interview, and his quotes were pulled for social media posts, which naturally got a lot of attention. Probst explained that his role at the NASCAR R&D Center was to work on projects that could come to fruition in the sport’s future, specifically looking at crossover utility vehicles (CUVs). He did say it wasn’t something that would happen soon or at all.

But that’s not how it was taken. And the fact that it was mentioned at all didn’t go over well on social media.

“I think that the gist of what I was saying is that as we plan for our future, it’s our goal to be in the driver’s seat of where we’re going,” Probst explained last week, “and part of that is to not wait until the moment hits you where you have to decide we’re doing this or we’re doing that.”

Probst used the example of the Craftsman Truck Series' creation in the 1990s. There were critics at that time, too, of NASCAR racing pickup trucks. It’s now one of the most popular series in the sport and is often said to have some of the best racing.

“Today, when you sit back and look at the cars and trucks that are sold in the United States, it’s clearly trucks and crossover vehicles at this point,” Probst said. “Obviously, there are still cars sold, and the Cup Series is our car platform. I think when you look across it, it’s not us sitting here saying we’re going to do any one of these things. We say all the time, we do listen to our fans, and at the same time, though, I think it’s our job to be ready if someday down the road somebody says, ‘Hey, you should be doing this.’

“Well, then we’ve already engineered it out, and we know how to put a body on one of these stock cars and go race and have the aerodynamic characteristics that you want so that it’s raceable. And that doesn’t even mean that it’s in line to go to the O’Reilly Series, but that we can create a fourth series or something like that down the road if the right OEMs were in line and we had the teams to do it. So, I think from our side, we’re just making sure that we’re prepared for whatever comes, and we don’t just sit back and wait for it to show up at our doorstep and then go, ‘Oh, gee, let’s learn about this.’”

It is also important for the R&D Center to be proactive rather than always reactive. The state-of-the-art facility in Concord, N.C., opened in 2003 and is mainly focused on innovation, technology, and inspection.

In its earliest form, the building was a place for reactive measures because of so many crashes and other unfortunate incidents the sport had to handle. There are still significant sporting elements that NASCAR must work through, but there are also more resources that allow it to do so.

“We’re just doing what-ifs,” Probst said. “I know the electric got a lot of buzz around it as well, and I get tagged with it, which I get, but we’re not sitting here saying any of them will be electric.  … While we look at these technologies, that doesn’t always mean it’s going to be a racing series.

“I think for us, and it could be for anything that we develop, it doesn’t necessarily mean a 100% it’s coming to this series or that series. But we’ve learned over the course of time that we can create one-off vehicles that give us a great opportunity to engage with our fans, to create content for our sport.”

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