JANUARY 26, 2006

Red Bull to buy old Penske factory

The new Team Red Bull Toyota NASCAR team is tipped to be buying the old Penske Racing South facility on Knob Hill Road in Mooresville, North Carolina. Penske recently moved out to a new 425,000 sq ft facility, leaving the old workshops available. Team Marty Gaunt is a former general manager of Kranefuss Haas Racing and later Penske Racing South before moving on to smaller teams and becoming an owner in recent years with Red Horse Racing. The team is planning to have 75 employees by the summer and wants to run a car at the end of this year to prepare the team for its debut with Toyota next year. As the team cannot run Toyotas until 2007 this would have to be an existing model from one of the rival operations.

Gaunt says that information from the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team should prove helpful.

"I think we can tap into some of their technology and things they've already learned," he said. "That's going to help us."

Knob Hill Road is at the very centre of the NASCAR cluster with Roush Racing and PPC Racing also based on the same street.