Bowyer puts the COT through crash test

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Coming into this week's two-day Car of Tomorrow test session at Bristol Motor Speedway, the No. 1 question on everyone's mind was how the spec car's front splitter would react to damage. Clint Bowyer answered that question firsthand Thursday morning.

Bowyer was in the middle of a long run and was nearly ready to bring his No. 07 Chevrolet back to pit road when he lost it in Turn 4 and hit the wall.

"It was actually our fastest lap 48 laps into a run," Bowyer said with a smile. "I was just fixing to come in and tell them how good of a job they did and away it went."

Bowyer's car had scrapes all down the right side, and most importantly the front splitter was heavily damaged to where it was dislocated from the nose on the right side.

The damage was more that Bowyer thought.

"I knew I hit pretty hard, more than a body hammer wasn't going to fix, but I didn't know it was going to be that bad," Bowyer said. "Most of the impact was in the right-front, and heck, the deck lid is all moved over."

By the time Bowyer parked his car, got out and changed clothes, a crowd had gathered around his machine to examine the damage.

"There's a little bit of an interest in, 'Is there more than an average amount of damage sustained or less amount?'" said John Darby, Nextel Cup Series director. "Everything we saw here was really no different than if a current car had scraped the wall or hit another car."

The accident forced a stoppage, and less than 30 minutes later the session came to a close because of persistent rain in the area.

But Bowyer said he'd like to see a stronger body on his car once it gets in race conditions with cars driving side-by-side, which wasn't seen at all during the two-day session.

"We're just going to have to pay attention to that and beef them up a little bit," Bowyer said, "especially with the style of racing we're going to see here." (Continued)