COT implementation has teams on new timetable (cont'd)

Although four-car juggernaut Hendrick Motorsports has won every COT race this season, one goal of the program -- which locks the car into a smaller technical box, theoretically leveling the playing field -- is to benefit medium-sized organizations like Ginn, which planned its expansion around the COT. Another such operation, Haas CNC Racing, has also seen improved performance this season, partly due to the COT.

Haas CNC, like Ginn, uses Hendrick engines. Team general manager Joe Custer sees the accelerated rollout as a positive.

"It allows us to focus on one technology. It allows us to improve what we're doing in the Car of Tomorrow, which we've been OK in. But we need to put more effort into it, and this will allow us to put more effort into that platform and hopefully produce better results at the racetrack. It's absolutely better for us," he said.

"There's so much to learn with this car. Now that we're going full time, we can devote 100 percent of our research and development resources into understanding the car better and getting it right for next year. That's the point, in our minds. It's not where we want it to be. It's OK, but it's not where we want to be. Now we can clear the table off and say, this is it, let's go."

Kyle Petty, CEO and driver for Petty Enterprises, would like to see NASCAR go even further.

"I think we should run the COT the second-half of 2007," he said. "These are smart people in the NASCAR garage. There are smart crew members, smart crew chiefs and smart drivers. They can handle the COT. They can make this work.

"It's a great move by NASCAR. I think we've gotten into some headaches with it in the races that we have run, but we need to race it more and more. We need to learn it and get into a rhythm. This will obviously do that in 2008. You have to applaud NASCAR for making this move. I'm all for running this car as soon as possible every week."

The downside is that teams suddenly have an inventory of standard cars they're going to have to unload. Some of those vehicles likely are to be turned into show cars, although even those will have to be re-bodied to reflect the COT on the racetrack. Some will almost certainly be sold to teams in the ARCA series, which use cars similar to those employed in Nextel Cup.

"There's definitely going to be a buyer's market, that's for sure," Frye said.

And Nextel Cup teams will surely lose money in the bargain, even if one goal of the COT is to eventually save them money in the long term.

"It's not a pleasant experience," Custer said. "But at this level, at the Cup level, we understand it. That's just part of being in Cup. You expect change. You expect some of these expenses to come. They let us know a year or two ago that the COT was coming. It's not a surprise."