COT implementation has teams on new timetable

Motivated by close finishes in the first few Car of Tomorrow races and spurred on by team owners who'd rather not spend money to operate two programs at one time, NASCAR has scrapped its planned three-year rollout and will fully implement the new, winged vehicle next season. (Full story.)

That wasn't supposed to happen until 2009 under the original plan, which gradually phased in the COT from short tracks to superspeedways. Now, after just five COT events -- none of them on tracks larger than 1.3 miles in length -- NASCAR has decided to run the boxier vehicle with the rear wing and the front splitter for the entire '08 schedule.

Car of Tomorrow

• Cost Management
• Driver Safety
• Improved Competition
• A New Era

That seems just fine with team owners. Right now they're spending money to develop and race the COT as well as the standard car, which will become obsolete after this year's season finale.

"It's very difficult for teams to run both the Car of Tomorrow and the current car simultaneously," said J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing. "Across the board, most everyone's feeling in the sport is that we've come out of the box and had some good experiences with [the COT], so let's just implement it full-time in 2008. We're on board with that, and for us, it makes a lot of sense."

Three of the five COT races run this season were on short tracks. NASCAR is scheduled to use the vehicle in 16 events this year, the next coming June 3 at Dover International Speedway. The scheduled rollout had the COT being used primarily this season at tracks shorter than 1.5 miles in length, with the exception of events at Talladega Superspeedway and on road courses. The plan would then add intermediate tracks, such as 1.5-mile Lowe's Motor Speedway, next year.

But NASCAR liked the average margin of victory in COT races, which is .505 seconds compared to 1.286 seconds with the standard car. And team owners seem ready to unburden themselves of an older vehicle that's only becoming a drain on money and resources.

"We definitely think this is a good thing," said Jay Frye, general manager of Ginn Motorsports. "This is going to allow us to put more of our resources in that direction, and be even more prepared for next season."

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."