Ryan Newman was in Phoenix doing hospitality, that weekly routine of handshakes and question-and-answer sessions, when he finally grasped what troubled him most about the Car of Tomorrow. Forget the rear wing, the front splitter, the handling issues that sometimes make it difficult to pass. For this racecar driver, it came down to a more basic element -- NASCAR's new generation vehicle was forcing him to slow down, something that ran counter to his every instinct behind the wheel.

"I think the biggest disappointment with the new car compared to the old car is just pure performance, the fact that the car is a half-second slower," Newman said. "When we go to test we anticipate going faster each time we go there, whether it's Kentucky or Nashville or each racetrack we go to.

"For instance: Atlanta the last test, it's nice to be able to come back and go faster. You take a brand new car, or a brand new designed car and take it to the racetrack, and it at minimum is a half-second slower. It's difficult to say, 'Man this thing really drives good,' or, 'Man, this thing just feels that much better.' The Car of Tomorrow, which is going to be here all year next year, that's going to be our baseline as we go on. We kind of have to put all of those thoughts and all of those feelings behind us."

Because like or not, the Car of Tomorrow becomes reality for every Sprint Cup event as the calendar turns to the 2008 season, which opens with testing at Daytona International Speedway on Jan. 7. It's no longer the COT, but the standard NASCAR chassis, the car of today. But don't let that full-time implementation fool you -- according to the men who drive it and the crew chiefs who work on it every day, this is still very much a work in progress. There are still things they don't know about it, still technical limits they're trying to define, still places like Daytona and 1.5-mile intermediate tracks where it has yet to compete.

There's no more alternating between old car and new, that incredibly expensive and time-consuming two-step that teams were forced to dance last season. Now the changeover to a singular vehicle -- which owner Ray Evernham estimates cost his team $8 million -- is complete. The original three-year phase-in planned by NASCAR was scrapped at the behest of big teams, which didn't want to run multiple platforms any longer than they had to, and small ones, which saw the COT as a tool for leveling the playing field. So now the new car is here, for all 36 events. Even if teams are still trying to figure out what exactly they're dealing with.

"There's a lot we still don't know," Jeff Burton said. "Sometimes when you get a little bit of information, that's more deadly than having none. Each team is in a different situation. If you look ay where Hendrick is, I think they probably feel pretty good about themselves. If you look at where Gibbs is, I think they probably feel pretty good about themselves. There are some other teams that are kind of teetering. Again, a little bit of information is sometimes worse than none, and we're still in the process of gathering enough information to truly understand what we've got our hands on."

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.

Daytona Countdown

We are counting down the days to the 50th Daytona 500 on Feb. 17, 2008. Each day we will highlight a number that corresponds to the countdown number.

• More
• 50th Daytona 500 ticket design
• Get your tickets
• Book your travel

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."