After their car was built, the Petty team thought the Mirada looked like a great race car, and some initial testing pleased the longtime Dodge driver. A January 17, 1981, test session at Daytona Speedway where around 15,000 Petty fans showed up to watch. However the Mirada was slower than the GM and Ford cars of the day. This testing of the car, as well as the Junior Johnson team's testing, revealed that while it looked fairly aerodynamic, the bodystyle actually had a very high coefficient of drag that made it incapable of speeds over 185 mph. The Petty team removed the Mirada sheet metal (passing it to Buddy Arrington) and, like the Johnson team, elected to build GM G platform bodied racecars (as shared by the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Buick Regal), and this put an end to Chrysler's attempt to re-establish itself in NASCAR.