Teams starting to increase COT fleets just at right time

Ronnie Hoover and the boys in the fabrication shop at Richard Childress Racing have proven that a wrecked Car of Tomorrow can be returned to service virtually as quickly as a damaged "standard" Nextel Cup car.

And according to Hoover, RCR's fab shop manager, NASCAR will be flexible enough with its inspection parameters to enable teams to quickly get their COTs back into action.

Clint Bowyer, who drives RCR's No. 07 Chevrolet, plans to use the same Chevrolet Impala SS chassis this weekend that he wrecked on March 1 on the final morning of a two-day en masse COT test at Bristol.

Hoover said that, other than a phenomenon he said teams will find widespread with the COT, there were few issues with getting the car ready to get back on track -- despite Bowyer's shock at how much it was damaged in the crash.

"That car was hit on the right-front corner," Hoover said. "But it was kinked on the left side, as well, because of the way the entire car is put together.

"Still, we had it back in the fab shop the morning after we got back, and it was there three days, then four more days getting finished -- and it was ready to go again."

But the real test will come next week, following Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, and in the ensuing weeks when three of the next four Nextel Cup Series races -- five of the next seven races over eight weeks -- are COT events.

Hoover was impressed with the way he said NASCAR's inspectors worked with him when Bowyer's primary car was repaired.

"The car was not quite as perfect as it was when it was first built," Hoover said. "But NASCAR told us to bring it anyway."

Fixing post-race damage is only one aspect teams are facing, beginning this weekend. The COT has two new elements that mount on the racecars basically parallel to the track surface, and both of them are vital components in enabling a damaged car to continue competing.

A splitter is mounted to the bottom of the car's nose and a wing, with vertical end plates on either side, is mounted above the back of the rear deck lid.

"I think by rolling it out at the places they've decided to, you're going to see a minimal amount of impact when a crash happens and a splitter gets ripped off," Hall of Fame Racing crew chief Brandon Thomas said. "Obviously, nobody is going to want to run it without the rear wing on -- you're not even allowed to.

"Even at a place like Bristol that'd be a hairy proposition." (Continued)