NASCAR director of cost research Brett Bodine tested the Car of Tomorrow at Daytona on Thursday. Credit: Dave Rodman/NASCAR.COM

Car of Tomorrow hits Daytona for test

Speeds not as fast as the Cup cars, but they're close

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- On Thursday, NASCAR made a giant step toward a hoped-for "universal car" for use in the Nextel Cup Series when Brett Bodine tested the latest prototype of the Car of Tomorrow at Daytona International Speedway.

Ultimately, Bodine said, NASCAR would like to use the exact same car at every track by only adding and subtracting simple bolt-on pieces.

The Car of Tomorrow can be equipped with a wing or a spoiler. Credit: Nate Mecha/HSP

The most radical change in the car that last appeared at Atlanta Motor Speedway last fall was a flat-plane wing on the car's deck lid that NASCAR vice president of research and development Gary Nelson said was derived from similar applications in the Grand-American Rolex Series for road racing sports cars.

"It's all about wake turbulence," Nelson said of the airflow over the back of the car. "If you can control that wake turbulence [by using wings and different end plates] you can give the driver following more control and ability to pass and run side by side."

The only vehicle on hand Thursday was NASCAR's prototype. Bodine, a former cup owner/driver who now serves as NASCAR's director of cost research, said race teams have built between 11 and 12 of the cars.

NASCAR plans another test for the Car of Tomorrow at Daytona next week, but Bodine knows what the sanctioning body is up against as it hopes to get a good evaluation of how the new concept works in a draft.

"These race teams are in the midst of preparing for a very important part of their seasons," Bodine said of February's Speedweeks schedule, including the Daytona 500. "But we would hope to see four or five of the cars here for the test."

CAR OF TOMORROW At Atlanta last fall, Petty Enterprises, Richard Childress Racing, Roush Racing, Hendrick Motorsports and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated tested versions of the Car of Tomorrow.  •   Click here for complete story.

Nelson predicted that test would consist of dialing in the cars with single car runs, then staging a car behind NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow using a regular spoiler to see how it behaved, then swapping the spoiler for a wing, with the same following car and driver to compare notes.

"We'll crawl, walk and then run," Nelson said. "But what's exciting to us is the platform looks like it is going to transfer to Atlanta and Charlotte and Texas. You might be in a different state, but the air is the same everywhere you go, and that's what we're working on."

Chip Ganassi Racing crew chief Lee McCall was at Daytona Thursday and said his team would have its version of the Car of Tomorrow at Daytona next week.

On Thursday, Bodine said NASCAR's test team wanted to approximate the speeds turned in the three previous days of Nextel Cup testing.

The car, which had the same open-configuration motor that it tested with at Atlanta, ended up using a 1.25-inch restrictor plate to achieve similar speeds to what the current Cup cars ran earlier in the week.

Bodine's first laps after the lunch break were in about 48.19 seconds at a speed of 186.760 mph.

Nelson was most thrilled that switching from the vertical spoiler to the wing actually produced more of a handling imbalance than NASCAR had been led to believe would occur in wind-tunnel tests.

Bodine said the car was plenty stable and that the real test would come when it could be put into drafting formations.

Nelson said an announcement would be made in the near future about the exact implementation of the new generation car but that he anticipated a "transition to using the Car of Tomorrow throughout 2007."