2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (Start Your Engines!)

The 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series was the 65th season of professional stock car racing in the United States and the 42nd modern-era Cup series season.

The 2013 season was the first season using the New Body Program carbody, the SC-13 body, and marked the return to the qualifying procedure that was used before the 2005 season. However, at the two road courses on the schedule drivers qualified in groups instead of single laps. In September 2012, NASCAR removed a ban introduced in the 2008 season on testing at tracks that were on any of the premier series' schedules.

Technical changes
2013 marked the completion of the New Body Program, with the introduction of the SC-13 body. The body was the culmination of five years of development starting in 2008 shortly after a meeting between NASCAR and Detroit automakers.

The goal of the SC-13 body was to update the look of the cars to better match their showroom counterparts. The NC-06 body introduced in 2006 did not reflect the car design trends of the early 2010s, as cars had become taller than the low-slung Sprint Cup Series cars. Not helping matters was the fact the Nationwide Series had switched to a different body in 2011, the NW-11 body, colloquially known as the Muscle Body, that was meant to better represent the cars in showrooms; the NW-11 body was half-successful, as while the Chevrolet Impala bore little resemblence to any Chevrolet model (gaining the derogatory nickname "Frankenpala"), and the Toyota Camry was too boxy compared to its street counterpart, the Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger were universally well-received for being nearly-identical to their showroom counterparts.

For the SC-13 body, all four manufacturers were told to make the cars as stock-looking as they could while still staying within NASCAR's guidelines. Chevrolet replaced the Impala with the new Chevrolet SS (really a rebadged Holden Commodore for the American market), while Ford, Dodge, and Toyota continued using the Fusion, Charger, and Camry, respectively; Dodge also offered the Dart as an optional bodystyle, with McDuffie Racing running the full 2013 season with a Dart.

The SC-13 body received universal acclaim for its appearance while still maintaining the high-quality racing that the NC-06 body had come to be associated with.