NASCAR makes changes, and Bristol pays the price (cont'd)

Sunday's event was unfortunately in that last 1 percent. Hey, it wasn't the 1973 March race that Cale Yarborough somehow won wire-to-wire. But it had no energy, no vitality, no juice. There were some long green-flag stretches where the leaders were strung out the length of a frontstretch, and it seemed -- oh, the heresy -- like a miniaturized California.

"When I got up front into the top-six, top-seven, [early leader] Tony Stewart was gone. He was checked out. Second place was five car-lengths ahead of third place, which was three car-lengths ahead of fourth. We just kind of got strung out there in the front. I was running around there like 12th, 11th, 10th, and I looked up front and there was nothing going on," Busch said.

"I said, 'Oh, this is a great race.' The spotter came over and said, 'There's a logjam behind you.' I'm like, 'There's a logjam because people can't turn.' They're sliding up the racetrack, they're bumping into each other just trying to make way and get through traffic and what not. When you're out front, you can't pass all that well. I got tight in traffic, and then late in the race when Denny [Hamlin] came up to pass me, I was loose. At Bristol, that's definitely not very cool."

Busch didn't try to hide his disdain for the new car, which will also be used in next week's race at Martinsville. NASCAR decided to begin the rollout on short tracks, and gather information about the vehicle's performance before moving on to larger venues where aerodynamics are more of a factor. Before the race, Busch told crew chief Alan Gustafson that he hoped he would win the COT's maiden voyage so he could tell everyone "how terrible it is." And he did just that.

"It just doesn't turn," he said. "For me, it's not very fun to drive. It's a hard car to race around the racetrack with other competitors, because it just doesn't have the maneuverability. You can't really pass that well. With the old car, if you were tight, at least you could maneuver it a little bit. You could go up the racetrack, you could try to come back down and shoot through a hole. With this thing, whenever you start sliding, the front tires continue to slide. It's almost like they're on skis out there."

To be fair, NASCAR is in a delicate situation. The sanctioning body is trying to build a new car that it believes will make life better for drivers and teams alike. No one expected the transition to be an easy one. But few also expected an event like the one that unfolded Sunday, when the only real action was Jeff Gordon's rally from 27th to third, and rookie Juan Montoya bumping people out of the way.

"It was really hard to get a good balance on the car," said Donnie Wingo, Montoya's crew chief. "You were going to be tight no matter what you did."

NASCAR makes changes, and the racing at wonderful little Bristol pays the price. First the Chase, then the COT. On Monday they start tearing down walls and getting ready to replace the concrete racing surface. No one seems willing to simply leave the place alone.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.