AUGUST 20, 2002
Former Ford F1 boss announces IRL chassis
The pair say Falcon will be the "premier race car engineering facility" in the United States. In modern times almost all of the CART and Indy Racing League chassis have been built in Europe, either in Britain (home of March, Lola, Reynard, Penske and G-Force) or Italy (where the Dallara chassis are manufactured), so the establishment of Falcon Cars in the US is a significant happening.
Kranefuss (64) is a German by birth but built his name in Detroit after successes for Ford in Germany and then in Europe. Under his guidance Ford began to be a force in NASCAR, Bill Elliott winning the Winston Cup in 1988 and Alan Kulwicki in 1992. Kranefuss left Ford in 1993 to set up a CART team of his own but eventually went into partnership with Carl Haas in NASCAR although Haas was later bought out by Roger Penske. Penske-Kranefuss Racing enjoyed considerable success with driver Jeremy Mayfield in the late 1990s.