Yahoo Autos The Autoweek Dispatch: Ford’s Cobra Jet 1400 Will Make Public Runs at the US Nationals
The NHRA’s Labor Day weekend race just got a whole lot more interesting and, perhaps inevitably, the lawsuits might be starting to fly over canceled Formula 1 races. Here’s what’s happening in the car world:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The well-being of our fans and competitors and workers is the most important responsibility we have at IMSA. And we’ll do everything we can to ensure that—and put on a good show.”
—IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series president John Doonan, talking to Autoweek about this weekend’s race at the legendary 4-mile Road America track. Road America’s wide-open spaces are good for fans to practice social distancing. Thanks to the You Know What this year Doonan has had to implement schedule changes, high-level layoffs and the almost-certain delay of the new LMDh prototype car (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) for at least a year. This weekend IMSA is hoping for a healthy crowd—in more ways than one.
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Ford’s electric Cobra Jet 1400 has been on my mind ever since the company showed it a couple months ago. Fourteen hundred horsepower and 1,100 lb-ft will do that. Ford sources tell me in private testing the beast has made quarter-mile runs in the “low-eight-second range.” So thinking about that and Chevy’s eCOPO Camaro I wonder how long before the National Hot Rod Association creates a class for these monsters, and whether the automakers would play?
So we called Ford, Chevrolet and the NHRA.
Ford sources told Autoweek the company intends to hold the car’s first public exhibition runs at the NHRA’s U.S. Nationals Labor Day weekend in Indianapolis. Another source told us an announcement about that is coming soon. “We are testing and testing,” a source told us. “The hardest thing is getting the power down smoothly at launch.” He also said “if the NHRA came up with a class for EVs we would certainly look into doing customer versions of the Cobra Jet 1400.”
Chevrolet introduced the eCOPO concept at SEMA in 2018 and has done demonstration runs at a few NHRA events. Chevy sources didn’t come out and say they’d do customer cars but did say the concept was well received and generated a lot of interest. “We’re still working on potential eCrate concepts,” a source told us. “We continue to explore what’s possible.”
NHRA sources told us the sanctioning body worked with Chevrolet and is also working with Ford on the Cobra Jet 1400. “These vehicles can be raced in NHRA ET Bracket classes right now,” he told us, “and we would certainly consider using them in various NHRA categories.”
He said the NHRA would need to better understand the EVs’ performance and safety parameters “before we could put them in their own category.
“We have numerous meetings with the manufacturers regarding various forms of drag racing and we’ll continue to do that as the development continues down the path,” our NHRA source told us.
When we suggested this kind of racing could some day be a big deal he said, “I mean, Top Fuel didn’t exist at one point, so who knows what could come out of it?”
