There are major differences in the Car of Tomorrow vs. today's machine, and Kurt Busch showed how fast it can run. Credit: Turner Sports New Media

COT experiment good for Penske, NASCAR

Officials say restrictor plates to stay on COT for superspeedways

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- All 60 Nextel Cup teams that participated in two sessions of Jackson Hewitt Preseason Thunder testing at Daytona International Speedway had the option of testing a Car of Tomorrow.

Only Penske Racing's two teams, with drivers Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch, availed themselves of the opportunity, but after a little more than a half-day of running time Wednesday, they pronounced it a positive experience.

	Kurt Busch topped 191 mph in Wednesday's morning test session with a COT. Credit: Autostock
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And so did NASCAR, which reconfirmed that a gear rule would be in effect -- in addition to a restrictor plate -- when the COT races at NASCAR's biggest tracks.

The only confusing aspect of allowing the COTs to test with the standard speedway cars preparing for the 2007 Daytona 500 was the resultant headlines that blared "Busch sets fastest time of testing."

Busch's lap of 191.188 mph in the COT was run using a 1 1/8th-inch restrictor plate, not the 7/8th-inch plate used by the standard cars -- rendering it worse than an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Paul Menard's No. 15 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet was credited with the fastest lap of seven days of Cup testing, at 187.099 mph, and that was recorded in a multi-car draft.

"It's just a matter of us wanting to get ahead of the game and set the curve and raise the bar for people thinking they've got their COT scienced-out," Busch said. "In the end this Car of Tomorrow is going to be a good thing.

"I can't say that right now it's approved by everybody's standards, but for us and myself the interjection of safety is obviously the key thing."

An actual COT has yet to be significantly crashed, at a team's test or by NASCAR, though significant computer modeling of crashes has been done.

At this point, performance is still the hot-point for NASCAR and the teams.

"I think it's obvious, with restrictor plates, that we can make them run any speed we want to," Nextel Cup Series director John Darby said. "We can make them run 192 mph, like we did [Wednesday] or we can bring them back into the mid-180s, like we ended the day.

"Although we got a good baseline at Talladega [last fall] with rear-axle ratios or gear rules and plate size for what seemed to be a nice combination, the first mission for [Wednesday] was to find that same sweet spot, if you will."

Darby said a 15/16ths-inch plate resulted in a lap of about 172 mph, while the 1 1/8th-inch plate went just over 191.

"That made it real easy to come back in between those two and understand what speed we would have with that and then start adjusting the gear ratio to where I think they finally netted out at about 185 or 186 [mph]."

"I think it's obvious, with restrictor plates, that we can make the Car of Tomorrow run any speed we want to." - John Darby

For the day, Busch made 12 laps in his No. 2 Dodge Avenger COT and Newman made seven in his No. 12 version.

Darby said the adjustments gave NASCAR and the teams an idea of the result of the incremental changes that would help make decisions for COT races at Daytona and at Talladega, where the first race on a superspeedway will occur this fall.

"With the Car of Tomorrow, another thing that's new is we've never had a gear rule at Daytona and Talladega before, which we will have going forward," Darby said. "So when you put a gear rule in -- which obviously has as much relationship to changing engine RPM as the plate does -- you've got to balance things.

"Although we've run the COT at Daytona before and had different sized plates on it, we were never in a position to try to balance it with a gear ratio, which is what we did [Wednesday]."

Newman's crew chief Mike Nelson said his organization's intention was to provide information.

"We came down here working with NASCAR as far as the specs and we tried to make it as legal to what we think the current spec is as possible and give those guys some data and get ourselves started working on the speedway cars," Nelson said. "We're further ahead [Wednesday] than we were [Tuesday].

"It was just a good chance for us to get our feet wet and learn a few things. It's a different animal and it was a good opportunity to get a head-start for Penske Racing."

Newman took a wait-and-see attitude away from his runs.

"It drove OK [and] it stuck pretty good," Newman said. "It seems like it stuck better than the [standard] car, but we'll see what it's like when it gets in dirty air and traffic."

And Newman said that, as fascinating as he thought Busch's flying lap was, it meant nothing for the future.

"That's cool as far as speed goes, but that's not the way we can race around here, especially when you get 15 of them in a line," Newman said. "It'll be really hauling the mail.

"We proved [Wednesday] you can't take the plates off of them. That was still a pretty good sized plate on there and that was 190-something mph. [Not] until we get less horsepower will we run with less restrictor plate or no restrictor plate."

	Ryan Newman said the COT stuck better to the track than a standard racecar. Credit: Autostock
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As he said he often does, Busch had a different opinion.

"I thought it was great," Busch said. "I thought the car could handle any speed it wanted to go. It gets back to a little bit of what they have with the Truck Series, big drag that slows the car down aerodynamically, but an open motor that has the horsepower like we're used to at all our tracks.

"It was real interesting to drive. It was right on that edge of sliding all four tires, similar to what we get with the regular car when we're in the draft. It was comparable."

Busch said the test was worth the time.

"It was a nice shakedown for us, I think, to get ahead of the competition," Busch said. "It was a treat to go out there and drive as fast as we did at one point and then get a chance to work on the car in a realistic box."

Busch's crew chief, Roy McCauley, who like Nelson is an engineer, was thrilled at that aspect of the new car.

"The Dodge was a lot of fun actually because it was something different," McCauley said. "You really feel like you're cutting some new ground.

"We're far from learning everything we need to know, but we definitely learned some things to get started, enough to tickle the brain and kind of help out NASCAR. They helped us and it was a real nice situation."

McCauley agreed with Newman that the most open plate tried Wednesday would probably not be an option, and he bemoaned the fact that rain ended the test more than two hours early.

"I think it's good to have the data [but] I don't see us racing that [1 1/8th-inch plate]," McCauley said. "If I had to guess I'd say it looks like a 1-inch [plate] with a 370 gear.

"I really wanted to run the rest of the day so we could put the cars in the draft and see how much of a hole was being made, so to speak, [to find out] can you pull up from 100 feet or can you pull up from 400 feet?

"With an Indy-style car [the hole in the air] was large and I'm not sure what that effect is and we were going to work on that [Wednesday] afternoon. I'm sure it's similar. I'm just not sure how big it is."