Many unknowns remain as COT nears full-time status (cont'd)

How long will that take? The new car was used in 16 races last year, events including both road courses, one superspeedway (Talladega, in the fall) and all oval tracks shorter than a mile-and-a-half in circumference. A handful of crew chiefs were suspended for technical violations on the car, including two -- Hendrick's Chad Knaus and Steve Letarte -- who thought they were working in areas not covered by the inspection template. Drivers complained ad nauseam about handling and struggles trying to pass. The protective foam on the right side showed a tendency to burn because of its proximity to the exhaust pipes, a matter NASCAR quickly remedied by issuing a technical bulletin.

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They were all the growing pains associated with phasing in a new vehicle very different from the one teams and drivers were used to. More are undoubtedly coming in 2008, a year in which competitors will race the new car on all intermediate tracks for the first time, despite having only a handful of test days on those venues. They'll race the new car in all restrictor-plate events -- the 50th Daytona 500 among them -- with only that single Talladega race from this past year as their baseline. There will almost certainly be more crew chiefs who stumble into gray technical areas, either accidentally or on purpose, and find themselves watching six races from the couch.

Full-time implementation may be here, but the adjustment period continues. Todd Berrier, crew chief for reigning Daytona 500 champion Kevin Harvick, believes it will be late in the 2008 season before teams become fully comfortable with what they're dealing with.

"I think the winter of '08 will be the first time anyone will take a breath and realize, all right, maybe we do have a plan, and we recognize what next year is going to bring," he said. "Right now, every team knows as little about next year as they did this year, because it's the exact same circumstance. We're still running a different car at the mile-and-a-halfs, something we haven't done before. I'm not saying by the time next October and Charlotte rolls around that we won't be zeroed in on it. But up until that point, it's still going to be pretty hard."

Not everyone believes the continuing acclimation process will be a difficult one. Denny Hamlin thinks the new car performed better on the larger tracks it competed on this past season, places like Dover and Phoenix. In his mind, that bodes well for what the car might be capable of on intermediate speedways like Charlotte, Kansas and Atlanta.

"I think everyone is happier with it on the bigger tracks than they are on the short tracks," Hamlin said. "Aero is such a big deal with those things. When you go to a smaller racetrack, they're tough to pass. When we went to Dover, it was definitely a lot better. I think everybody is more excited about it going to a bigger track, because you can definitely move around there and not have to run right behind the other guy."

And then there's the tire question, stemming from the differences in weight placement and tire wear between old car and new. Some would like to see Goodyear develop COT-specific tires that theoretically could improve handling and make passing easier.

The new vehicle "is aerodynamically different. It has no left-side weight," Evernham said. "It's just going to take a while to figure it out. I keep saying Goodyear has to continue to design a tire specifically for the Car of Tomorrow, because the tire we use on [the old] car, especially on the left side, is not what we need for the Car of Tomorrow. In my opinion, and the Goodyear people might say I'm full of it, but the Car of Tomorrow might need a specific left-front tire, just because there's no weight over there."

Like everything else with the new car, it's an evolving issue. Goodyear officials gathered data on tire performance in the 2007 COT races, and learned their right-side tires were typically tougher to handle compared to those on the older cars because of the change in the loads produced. Some new tires for 2008 are a possibility, especially on tracks hosting the new car for the first time. The company held tire tests at two of those venues, Atlanta and Las Vegas, during the month of December.

From a testing standpoint, few preseasons have been so crucial. The three big tests looming over the next month -- at Daytona, Las Vegas, and California -- are all on tracks where the new car has never raced, and venues that will provide blueprints on how to attack speedways of similar lengths. And the transition will continue, from not only one type of car to another, but to what Burton sees as an entirely new way of thinking in this sport.

"[The old] type of car, this type of racing, is what this sport has been about for a long time," he said. "It's changing. We are in a changing world. I hope that it's better. I hope that long-term people will look back on it and say the Car of Tomorrow was a success. I think it has potential. But it has a lot to live up to.

"[The old] car in this platform, this mindset of building racecars and policing the sport, has been very successful. It is a completely new approach with the Car of Tomorrow. It's yet to be determined whether it's right or not. I think it has potential. But as in most cases, we won't really know that until we look back at history. I hope it is better."