Justin Marks and Kimi Räikkönen met with the media Saturday morning at Watkins Glen International. Marks was asked about future plans for Project 91, which is making it’s first attempt of the season this weekend with Kimi Räikkönen.
JUSTIN, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE OVERALL PATH AND THE FUTURE OF PROJECT91 AND WHAT WE CAN SEE WITH THE PROGRAM MOVING FORWARD? ARE THERE ANY PLANS FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR OR NEXT YEAR?
JUSTIN MARKS: “This is the only event for PROJECT91 this year. This is really our opportunity to sort of build this program; see how it impacts the operations of the company to field a part-time third car. I‘ve been telling people; we haven‘t hired one person for this project. There‘s just been a lot of people at Trackhouse that have been doing time-and-a-half to get this to go. This is really just about what it looks like to field a part-time third car, as far as on the operations of the company, moving forward. This will be on the only event this year.
The road courses are kind of the ideal places to bring guys like Kimi in.. just because of the experience on the road courses. I think it‘s a quicker learning curve and they can get up to speed a lot more quickly than to go to ovals.
So with that being said; ultimately PROJECT91 is a program that operates at all of the road courses during the season and then potentially some of the major events, like the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600, or something like that. I think at some point, you get so many races that you have to look at just actually fielding a third full-time car. But I think for PROJECT 91, it‘s a six to eight race program potentially next year and beyond. It‘s a brand extension of Trackhouse. I think we can get really unique on the content side, on the merchandise side and just create great stories. That‘s sort of where I‘d like to see it go.”
— Team Chevrolet Racing —
