Ford end support for Jasper team.

The #77 Jasper Motorsports NASCAR Winston Cup team has lost its manufacturer backing from Ford after driver Dave Blaney drove a Dodge Intrepid in last Sunday's EA Sports 500 at Talladega.

Jasper owner Doug Bawel elected to dump the team's Ford Taurus chassis for the trip to the 2.66-mile restrictor-plate oval due to the team's ongoing engine liaison with Penske Racing.

Although Penske switched from Ford to Dodge at the end of 2002, the Penske-Jasper engine alliance continued and the team felt that at a track where maximum horsepower is essential, it would be better to join Penske in the Doge camp.

Understandably, this led to Ford discontinuing their factory backing of the team much in the same way that Dodge did with Bill Davis Racing earlier this year. The #77 team will now lose the use of the Ford wind tunnel and many of the free parts and components given to the remaining factory teams. They will also no longer be privy to any of the set-up data that the rival 'factory' Ford teams allow to share between themselves.

On Wednesday evening, Jasper crew-chief Robert 'Bootie' Barker appeared on SPEED Channel's 'Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain' programme to shed some light on the matter.

"With our ongoing developments with the Penske Jasper engines -- of course two thirds of it is Dodge -- we just felt it would be prudent to put (a Dodge) together just to see," stated Barker of the Jasper team's first ever Winston Cup race not with a Ford car. "The decision wasn't made until Wednesday evening when we had a Ford and a Dodge and had them both prepared and put them on a chassis dyno back to back -- and there's nothing wrong with the Ford, we've had a long relationship with Ford -- but this particular time, our development with the Dodge is a little better and we had more power there, so we decided to take the best piece we could for the sponsor to the track."

While Barker added that the team will continue to run Ford's for the remaining seven races of 2003, he also indicated that a move to Dodge as a factory backed team in 2004 was on the cards.

"I mean we knew what the consequences were going to be, and no disrespect to Ford because we appreciate the support they've given us, but it was more of a contingency sponsorship," added Barker, who is in his first year as Blaney's #77 crew chief. "It wasn't like the kind of sponsorship Jack Roush or Robert Yates would have, while both deserving and I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, but I'm just saying we want to win races and better ourselves, so that was the decision the owners and myself came up with."

Blaney and the #77 team, who are currently 28th in both the drivers and owners standings, finished 17th at Talladega.