Red Bull Global Rallycross race winner Steve Arpin has played down speculation surrounding his team’s split from Chip Ganassi Racing.
Ganassi have opted to step back from Red Bull GRC this year, with construction company Loenbro taking over full control of the team, having been co-owners for the last two years.
But despite the name of motosport giants Ganassi no longer adorning the team, team general manager Arpin, who raced for the team in 2015 and 2016, insists that the two sides haven’t completely closed the door on one another.
“I don’t even know if I’d call it a split,” said Steve Arpin when asked by The Checkered Flag about the team’s recent change of ownership. “It’s a season where Ganassi is really going to focus on their core series, their core business, which is NASCAR, IndyCar, and their Ford GT programme on the IMSA side of things.”
“The rallycross programme is a lot smaller of a programme than those other programmes so all of us over here we’re going to really focus and get laser focussed on what we need to do to essentially beat the Volkswagens. That was our goal last year, we knew exactly what we need to do in the off-season to accomplish that, we’re working on it,” he added. “Paul and Jon Leach from Loenbro stepped up to the plate early this year and gave these guys a commitment that we’re going to move forward and we’ve been working on these cars, we’ve got all the guys going full time day-in, day-out working on these cars getting them tore-down, rebuilt and developed a little more too to be ready to hit the track this year.”
Despite Loenbro taking full control, the team is fundamentally the same as the one that won two races in 2016, with the same cars, equipment, and staff all remaining, but the entire operation moving 10 minutes away to a new location just outside of Mooresville, North Carolina.