Teams starting to increase COT fleets just at right time (cont'd)

Roush Racing crew chief Bob Osborne agreed with Thomas, saying he'd rather not experience how much time it would take to make in-race repairs.

"The Car of Tomorrow is going to be quite challenging, especially at a place like Bristol [because] with the cars we have today, if you wreck, you come in the pits and beat and bang and patch up your car and you're back on the track," Osborne said. "It's not going to be that simple with the COT.

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"If you lose your wing, you'll have to pretty much replace your deck lid, which will not be a quick fix, especially at a short track like Bristol."

After the two-day Bristol test at the beginning of the month, Bobby Labonte said the "jury of the fans" would be out on the COT until after Sunday, at least.

"I don't think you're going to be able to knock anybody out of the way with that thing [because] if you knock the front off and that thing [wing] off the back you're done," Labonte said. "That's probably the worst thing. If you get out and do something wrong, and come into the pits to fix it, I'm not sure you can fix it now.

"If there's 22 cars at the end of the race and nobody riding around because they can't fix their stuff, those people in the stands will dictate what it's going to be."

Thomas was on the engineering staff at Joe Gibbs Racing when the development of the Car of Tomorrow began and he had extensive experience with it there, on a variety of tracks.

"The wing is mandatory, just like the spoiler is in the current rules [and] obviously, it's mandatory because no one in their right mind would want to drive without it," Thomas said. "So it causes you to build wreck-repair carts the same way we build wreck-repair carts now.

"The splitter really changes things because it's so sensitive. It's not like running through the grass now and bending the valance in and coming in and hammering it back out.

"If you run through the grass and tear up the mounts for the splitter, now you've got to have a whole lower nose to put on the car to get a splitter back on there.

"The next six months is going to be a real rapid pace of development of pieces and parts to try and get a car repaired during a race."

Kevin Harvick, a former Bristol winner, was one driver who was not particularly concerned about splitter durability when questioned at the Bristol test.

"I was a little bit, I guess, not very knowledgeable about the splitter material -- what it was," Harvick said. "I'll be honest with you, at California, on the 33 truck [Kevin Harvick Inc. driver Ron Hornaday's Chevrolet], we drug the ground every lap. The splitter was fine after the race.

"I don't think the splitter's going to be a problem. We sat on it [and] drug it across the racetrack. It just kind of turns almost into like a hard little plastic ball. I think you can drag a lot. I think it's going to be pretty durable. I think they've definitely picked the right material for it.

"I was a little bit wary of the splitter. I think after watching Hornaday drag his truck all across the racetrack [at California], it ran 200, 250 miles. I think the material's going to be great."

The ironic thing about NASCAR's deployment strategy for the COT is that the cars are being debuted at tracks that are least aero-dependent, but most apt to result in damage.

The first five races are scheduled at Bristol, Martinsville (the circuit's shortest venue at .526 miles), Phoenix (a flat, 1-mile oval), Richmond (a high-banked, .750-mile oval) and Darlington (a variably banked, 1.366-mile oval).

Getting a fleet of COTs on the ground and ready to race has been something of an issue for some teams, but Hoover's group, which like virtually every other organization, has continued to work on its standard fleet while also preparing COTs. (Continued)