That had nothing to do with it. The "blue car policy" never existed. Ford encouraged teams to avoid using red when and where possible and to use blue if they could, but they never tried to force teams to stop using red and start using blue.
Ford cut funding to Triple Eight because they felt that Triple Eight were strong enough to survive on their own. Likewise Dick Johnson Racing the oldest team in the country. Ford thought that if they cut the funding to the teams that could survive without it and redirect that funding to the Ford teams that needed it - Stone Brothers and FPR - they could have more competitive cars on the grid that way. What they didn't realise is that teams like Triple Eight would take the loss of manufacturer backing very poorly.
I've never been able to work out where all this talk of a strictly-enforced "blue car policy" came from, but I suspect that it was started by Triple Eight in an attempt to discredit Ford. Things got really, really bitchy when they lost the funding, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did it to make it look like Ford were throwing away a championship-winning team over something as specious as the colour of their cars.
The Blue Car Policy originated from Ford themselves. Marin Burela (Ford boss of the time) sent an email to his team advising 888 had not honoured the blue policy of the contract and that email was leaked to the public.
Here is a copy of the email leaked:
"Employee Announcement
July 30 2009
Team,
I thought it was important that you should hear directly from me about yesterday's announcement that the Triple 8 race team and its drivers, including Craig Lowndes, will be racing Commodores next year. There is a lot of speculation and some negative commentary around about the decision so I’m giving you the facts.
Firstly, we spent a considerable amount of money sponsoring Triple 8 for a number of years.
We honoured every single aspect of our sponsorship arrangement with them and in return, we asked for one thing – that they respect our brand by painting their cars blue. This wasn’t just a simple request, it was written into their contracts every single year – and each year Triple 8 chose to defy that contractual obligation and paint their cars red. That may seem relatively minor but it’s not. We’re running a business here and investing significant sums of money in supporting motorsport. If someone continues to take large sums of money from us every year while continuing to blatantly defy the obligations they’ve agreed to in order to obtain that money, then we have no choice but to end that arrangement.
Make no mistake – Triple 8 was given every opportunity to live up to the contractual arrangements they agreed to. Eventually we said enough – as any responsible company would do. I make no apologies for doing that. It’s not just about the cars being painted blue, it’s about whether or not we have an open and trusting relationship with an organisation that significantly benefits from their involvement with us. That wasn’t there and, in the market environment we’ve been facing over the last few years, we simply cannot afford to continue giving money to a team that does not respect our brand.
Secondly, we are hugely disappointed that Craig Lowndes will be returning to Holden at the end of this year. We’re disappointed because he’s a great talent and we’re disappointed because we have gone out of our way to welcome Craig into the Ford family since he moved to us in 2001. We’re also disappointed because we found out this was happening on Tuesday evening. Our sponsorship of Craig has hugely benefited him financially since 2001 and I have yet to receive a phone call from Craig himself telling me of his decision to re-sign with Triple 8 and subsequently return to Holden. We had every intention of continuing our relationship with Craig into next year but this is now not possible.
We continue to support motorsport in Australia through our direct sponsorship of FPR and SBR and we also continue to provide significant in-kind support to other teams such as DJR. Motorsport continues to be a useful tool for us to communicate our brand promise to our customers. You can rest assured that we will continue to be involved in motorsport in Australia in the future and are completely focused on delivering winning results.
Thanks for your ongoing passion and support.
Marin"
, it's a Holden.
I approve of the NGV8s, I don't approve of the removal of one of my favourite tracks ever.
