Questions remain after day of COT practice, qualifying

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- With one Car of Tomorrow practice and now qualifying under the drivers' belts, one might think some questions have been answered as Sunday's Food City 500 and the debut of the COT in race conditions approaches. One would be wrong.

"What happens from now on is going to kind of be new to everybody, how it races and how it races with all 43 cars on the track," said Kasey Kahne, who will start on the outside of Row 1 with a speed of 125.313 mph (15.312). "It's a lot of unknowns and we'll find out this weekend and next weekend what this car is all about."

In the first practice Friday morning, the car was about being equal. Just a half-second separated the top time of Denny Hamlin (15.484) and the last-place lap of Joe Nemechek (16.011).

If the Car of Tomorrow is supposed to even out the field, some think it's working, as teams like Jeremy Mayfield, Mike Bliss and A.J. Allmendinger, who have found it hard to qualify on time, all made Sunday's race.

"Its interesting to look at the leaderboard and how some teams who you think would really be strong are struggling and other teams you might not give enough credit to are really running good," said J.J. Yeley, who will start 38th.

"I think that's what NASCAR had in mind when it dreamt up the Car of Tomorrow and trying to make it an equal playing field for teams that have $30 million budgets and teams the have $10 million budgets. So far it's working out."

Jeff Gordon, a five-time winner at Bristol Motor Speedway, won his fifth pole at the track on Friday with a speed of 125.453 (15.295). For Gordon, looking at past history at Bristol and the uncertainty of the COT, it was all about a good qualifying run.

"When we unloaded we were close, I felt like we had a car that was capable of running some fast times but we just kept making small improvements and right there toward the end of practice, the last couple runs we made we really hit on something and that's when I knew we had a shot at it [Friday]," Gordon said.

"I felt like qualifying would be tough and it would be important and I wanted to focus on it 100 percent -- we did and it paid off."

But it's the unknown that will plague these drivers until the checkered flag drops Sunday afternoon. (Continued)