Marcos Ambrose is hoping the arrival of a new high-downforce chassis will provide a kick to his 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup hopes in Las Vegas this weekend.
The Tasmanian and his Richard Petty Motorsports team have set a goal of improving performances on 1.5-mile tracks starting with Las Vegas with those style of ovals dominating the hectic NASCAR schedule.
RPM has spent the past few months preparing Ford Fusions under the new rules package.
Ambrose sits 18th in points after the opening two events at Daytona and Phoenix.
“One of the things that RPM has committed to myself and the entire organisation is to take the new sponsorship funds our partners have given us and dedicate it to the cars,” said Ambrose.
“We expect to run more new chassis this year as we go along, especially at the tracks like Vegas where downforce matters so much. We’re really putting an emphasis on this.
“Our guys put in a lot of hours over the winter, and we’ve done more testing too. We get an extra day of testing on Thursday, and we can learn more about the cars. It’s going to be an important weekend to collect information, study it and learn from it.
“We owe it to DEWALT and all our partners to put our best foot forward.
“They have invested in us, and we’re investing back to them. We need to get a good finish. Last weekend was tough on us, but we have a good outlook for this weekend. I have a lot of confidence in this new car.”
Ambrose heads to Las Vegas with a solid record having started inside the top-10 twice with a best finish of fourth in 2011 with RPM.
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