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

Hoover said that, without taking into account what happens at Bristol -- the .533-mile, 36-degree banked oval that is notorious for taking a toll on equipment -- RCR will have 12 ready-to-race COTs by the Monday before Martinsville's Goody's Cool Orange 500, the next COT race on April 1.

That's four cars for each of the teams RCR fields for drivers Bowyer, Harvick and Jeff Burton. Gibbs Racing also has at least four cars ready for each of its three teams, with others under way.

"Each one of our teams has four COTs done and every team has a fifth one but they're not done," Paul Menard's crew chief Tony Eury said Thursday of the situation at Dale Earnhardt Inc. "Some are still in the fab shop, a couple of them are in the body shop -- but most of the teams and people that we talked to here [Thursday], some of 'em are bringing their backup cars here [Friday] because they're not done yet.

"That, kind of makes you feel pretty good that we did get a head start, a little bit, on some people. It's just not very many people that have very many cars right now."

But teams' levels of preparation run the gamut from RCR and DEI, which intend to have separate primary and backup cars ready for both Bristol and Martinsville, to teams that have just two COTs ready.

Frank Kerr, crew chief for Michael Waltrip Racing's No. 00 Toyota, said his organization's three teams each had only two cars ready -- one primary car for each event.

Wood Brothers/JTG Racing has three fully decked-out COTs ready for the next two weekends, while Furniture Row Racing also has three cars that were built earlier this year by Cal Wells' PPI Motorsports.

Ginn Racing has three cars apiece for its three teams, and Roush Racing and Ganassi Racing each have at least a pair of cars for its five, and three teams, respectively.

Hall of Fame Racing, another single-car team that is affiliated with Joe Gibbs Racing, has three cars built, a fourth it expects to be complete the week after Bristol and a fifth it will immediately start, Thomas said.

Petty Enterprises has four cars ready for its two teams to use at Bristol, and plans to have two more prepared when the series goes to Martinsville, but its lead driver, Labonte, is worried -- despite Hoover's experience.

"We are going to race this new car three of four times pretty quick," Labonte said. "We know Bristol will be a good race. We then go to Martinsville and Phoenix [so] I hope everyone has enough cars built.

"If you tear one of these cars up, from what I've seen, it's going to be very difficult to get the car fixed for the next race. It just takes too much time to get the cars to fit the templates if you need to repair one.

"Hopefully our Dodges will be up front and we won't have to worry about that."

The premise of the COT, according to NASCAR, has been driver safety, better racing and cost savings to team owners. The proof of each of those won't come in the short term.

But Robbie Loomis, executive director of race operations for Petty Enterprises, which was one of the first organizations to get whole-heartedly behind the COT program, was optimistic on the eve of this weekend.

"I think the biggest thing I keep drawing back to is it's complicated, it's going to bring a lot of challenges," Loomis said. "I think the potential's definitely there.

"The great ones are going to figure it out and it will be a great race coming down to that last lap. Everybody will be talking about the last lap at Bristol [Monday] instead of the Car of Tomorrow."

But Hoover and Thomas agreed that the reality still is catching up on inventory and dealing with a situation Hoover called "liquid."

"You're not just thinking about one style of car, you're thinking about two completely different styles of cars right now," Thomas said. "I'm very much looking forward to the day that this transition is over -- whatever that path ends up being."

Hoover said teams received a bulletin from NASCAR on Tuesday that indicated additional dimensional changes.

"I really honestly think there will be several tweaks to this car before it is the car, set in stone, and [teams will be able to] run it all year long," Thomas said.