Inside the Garage with 29's Berrier (cont'd)

I think everybody's talked to NASCAR about it. I don't know what their stand is on it, but I think their stand is probably they're saying 'save money,' or this, that and the other.

But at the end of the day, this year is not going to save any money. I think we're probably going to spend 30 percent more this year than we did last year -- maybe even more than that -- due to this car.

Long-term, could the car save us money? Yeah, but are we going to go back to Pennzoil and Shell or whomever and say 'we don't need your five million dollars, we only need four? That's not going to change.

So I think that we need to be able to go to the tracks early, buy tires and test so we make the shows to where we keep putting people in the stands. That's the objective here.

Q: But we're talking racers here, so even if the cars' handling goes off, are we going to have some black walls at that place by the time 500 miles is over Saturday night?

Berrier: We're going to have some torn-up stuff. I think every car there will have some damage. There ain't no way the guy that wins the race won't have the [right] side tore off of the thing.

Luckily we got that foam in there and I think that will take some of the shock away.

Q: I know you had some misgivings about the Car of Tomorrow back in January, to your mind, what's the biggest thing that's been resolved with it in these first four races?

Berrier: Among the things that I thought were wrong with the car at the beginning of the year, the right-side foam, was something I thought was going to give us trouble -- but it took both Matt Kenseth and us both having trouble to really sink home that it was going to be trouble.

So that's resolved and that's not an issue any more.

Q: So what's the biggest ongoing issue?

Berrier: The things still don't have any front downforce. That hasn't been resolved and I don't know what we can do to resolve that. But there's a lot of talking going on through the garage and through NASCAR -- and I think they're listening.

They realize, maybe, that there's a problem with the center of gravity being higher and with the cars not turning, or rolling over too much and not having enough front downforce.

I do think that in the near future, when June or July comes and they say you're going to run these things at mile-and-a-halfs next year that they're going to have to take some really big steps to making the car turn.

So there will be some changes that come to add front downforce to the things.

Q: As a crew chief and a racecar engineer, what would you do to fix that, if you had free rein?

Berrier: Honestly, I don't know. I know what I would do if they said the cars still had to be symmetric and not look like they're cocked-around and not this, that and the other. I think the body has to be slid forward a fair amount on the car.

We have a tremendous amount of overhang in the rear and none in the front and I think there are some things we have to do to get overhang over the front tires. I just don't know how and how much it would cost.

Did we all spend tens of millions of dollars on templates and all these things, to say they're all no good any more? I don't think NASCAR is ready for all the bad press they're going to get from that.

So I don't know how the fix is going to come. Now, would they raise the splitter where we could travel the front of the cars more? Maybe that's an easy fix that wouldn't cost anybody a whole lot of anything.

So maybe there are some things like that that could be done. It's just a case where we could change every template on this [COT] and it would still be cheaper than running this car [COT as it is now] and the current car, parallel next year.

But I don't know what everybody is thinking, so you'll have to go back to what NASCAR's objective is, I think.

Q: What's been the most pleasant surprise about the Car of Tomorrow; now that you've actually run it a little bit?

Berrier: I don't know that there have been any surprises, at all. I think more so maybe us as competitors are not surprised -- and maybe NASCAR is surprised -- that the guys that were winning races are still winning races.

The ones that are missing races are still missing races. I think they thought that the Car of Tomorrow was going to fix their programs and change all that, so I think that's more surprising on NASCAR's side of things than it was for us, on the competitors' side of things.

When you go to Darlington, history's going to repeat itself. Jeff Gordon is going to be good, just like when you go to Richmond, history's going to repeat itself and Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick are going to be good.

History is history, it got that way for a reason and you're not going to be able to change it.