Still more to learn about new car after first full year

Not surprisingly, throughout the first season in which NASCAR fully employed its "new car," known up to 2008 as the "Car of Tomorrow" in the Cup Series, plusses and minuses emerged.

Without a doubt, the biggest plus was the car's safety aspects. After 36 races and brutal accidents endured without injury by Jeff Gordon at Las Vegas, Michael McDowell at Texas and Denny Hamlin at Talladega, among others; the car's safety is so taken for granted it's virtually unmentioned by anyone when discussing the car's impact on the sport, unless they're specifically asked.

"Obviously, the biggest positive of this car is the safety changes that were made to the car to protect the drivers," said Doug Duchardt, vice president of development for Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon's team. "The structure of the chassis has been solid."

"Let's not lose sight that [safety] is the most important part of this program," said NASCAR director of cost research Brett Bodine, who's been the prime mover in the new car program since its 2004 inception. "Unfortunately for some folks, we've proven a couple times what it's improved, safety-wise, but that's why this program is in place, to build a safer race car for our competitors, and I think we've achieved that, to this point.

New car 101

• The new car
• Inside the cockpit
• A new era
• More competition
• Driver safety
• Cost management

"But every day we're looking at safety and making improvements and trying to be better in that area, but certainly it's met our goals of improved safety."

But there are plenty of other comparisons to draw from 2007, when the new car was used in 16 of 36 races, to 2008, when it was used everywhere.

It was hoped that the new car would improve competition. That remains the proverbial work in progress, as a selective statistical analysis shows the old and new cars are competitively close; though acceptance from fans has come slowly.

It was hoped the new car would save team owners money, but only time will tell on that score, as well. A reasonable cross-section of opinions from a number of race teams' upper management found some optimism for an eventual cost reduction, but agreed it would take at least a few years to achieve any savings.

While initially developing the new car was understood to be a significant expense, the idea of some NASCAR officials was that it would be a "one size fits all" creation that eventually would cut the size of teams' fleets of cars, which had come to be custom-built for virtually every race track on the schedule.

Observers say some teams have bought into that concept better than others, but the bottom line is, competition drives race teams, and if keeping up means custom building, that's what teams will do.

One thing that's certain is the process of building these cars, and then getting them approved and registered into NASCAR's computer chip-based "system" -- which is a creation of the new car era -- has become a much more efficient and streamlined process than it was nearly two years ago, being cut in half according to some participants.

But to some degree, the flip side of the form-fitting template system and the accompanying chassis-certification process is that getting damaged cars back into service isn't as quick a process as it was with the former "standard car" -- even if teams decide to go that route -- versus converting a wrecked car into a show car or spare parts.

In the interest of stability, to enable continued and hopefully positive development of a known quantity and to control costs as much as possible, NASCAR has told teams no significant rule changes will be made to the new car for the 2009 season, a decision that was greeted positively by a group that thrives on finding loopholes, gray areas and advantages over the competition through massaging miniscule areas of its cars.

But even as it accepted that, those in the Cup garage were already looking to the horizon for possible changes. (Continued)