BRISTOL, Tenn. -- A year ago, Kyle Busch won the first race for NASCAR's latest Cup chassis design, and said in Victory Lane for the 2007 Food City 500, "I can't stand to drive them -- they suck."

After 20 races with the chassis, which features less downforce than the previous car and more power but a high center of gravity, Busch, along with many other drivers throughout the Sprint Cup garage, is much more accepting of the car.

"There's been a lot of progress with the new car," Busch said. "This is the first time we've been able to bring it back this year to a track that we've raced with it before. We'll see how it goes this weekend, but from the first race here to what we're coming here with now, we've made a lot of ground with the car.

"It's still an animal to drive -- it's hard to drive and it's definitely making us earn our pay. That's what we're here for and that's why we're the professionals and the best in the world, supposedly, racing in the Sprint Cup Series."

Busch's statistics in those 20 races, plus the fact that he comes into Bristol leading the Sprint Cup standings, point out why his stance has softened on it -- though he's still not a big fan.

Two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson has the most victories with the car, the five he scored in 2007. Carl Edwards has four, while Busch, with two wins, is one of only four drivers with more than one victory in the car.

Jeff Gordon, the 2007 season runner-up, has 12 top-five finishes in the car, Johnson has 10 and Busch has nine. And Gordon has a league-leading 15 top-10s with the car. Busch's current Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Tony Stewart, has 15, while Busch also has 15.

Ryan Newman, who won the 2008 season-opening Daytona 500, had a top-10 the next week at California and has maintained pace to sit fourth in the standings coming into Bristol, has made a decent adaptation to the car. But he knows there's a good reason.

Last season, per NASCAR's plan, the new chassis was used in 15 of 36 races, including all short tracks -- everything 1.3 miles and under -- as well as the two road courses. The "standard car," which was retired after last year's Homestead finale, was used in the other 17 races.

"The biggest thing is that we don't have anything to compare it to anymore," Newman said. "The old car is gone. There is no 'man this thing feels horrible,' [comparing] it to going to our Vegas or Charlotte car. You just can't do that anymore. We don't have anything to compare it to so there's no point in complaining. It doesn't drive as good. It doesn't feel like the old car did. It's like that for a reason. That's the way partially it was designed.

"We've made some big gains with the car. We've learned a lot of suspension things --- items that have changed because of the way we have to drive the cars, because of the suspension travels. They're harder to drive [but] that's OK. It's a little job security for us drivers. Other than that, there's still going to be a winner so we'll just go out and do what we have to do."

What the car has forced teams to do is make adjustments. Johnson was a bear with the car in its limited use a year ago. As its use has broadened, his team has struggled to adapt, with only a runner-up finish at California to show for the first four races.

Johnson thinks expanding the use of the car to tracks of 1.5 miles and up has increased the adaptation difficulty exponentially.

"On the easier tracks where grip is not all that difficult -- short tracks where aero is not all that important -- the racing has stayed very similar," Johnson said. "When you get on the bigger tracks, and Atlanta is a perfect example, it really puts everything to the test. The aero platform of the car -- the aero balance of the car, the weight distribution changes they've made, the roll center height changes they've made, the limitations we have in front geometry -- there are just a lot of things that all took grip away from the car.

Autostock

Carl Edwards has four victories in the new car.

Food City 500

Lineup

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet
2.	Jeff Gordon	Chevrolet
3.	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet
4.	Matt Kenseth	Ford
5.	Casey Mears	Chevrolet
6.	Tony Stewart	Toyota
7.	Sam Hornish Jr.	Dodge
8.	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet
9.	Carl Edwards	Ford
10.	Kevin Harvick	Chevrolet

• Lineup | Videos | Photos

"And then we had a new tire last weekend [at Atlanta] and all of that piled up to make a joke. They were just impossible to drive. But as we get to other tracks where grip is easier and better, I think the racing stays similar.

"It's going to be the extreme tracks [that will be a challenge]. Darlington, I remember last year was just a pain to drive and it was ridiculous how slow we had to go to stay on course. Now it's been resurfaced so that'll be a forgiving track.

"I think the high-grip-level tracks -- Darlington, Atlanta, Michigan, Pocono -- you're going to hear a lot complaining. It's going to be a tough, tough process to get the car right. And then you get to the other tracks and it'll be more normal."

The car's aerodynamic challenge comes from the fact that its dimensions are extremely finite, with infinitesimal template tolerances. Even suspension adjustments are limited. And the limitations have intensified the competition.

"It's closed the competition up much tighter for sure," Gordon said. "If you look at just lap times, you look at a much tighter group of cars. It's just made the crew chiefs have to go to a whole different area of tuning.

"I just think this car is very equal among all the teams out there. I think we've seen the potential to have some really good racing, we've seen some really good races but at the same time I'm still concerned because the aero-push behind cars is really, really bad.

"If you don't have a multiple-groove racetrack -- thank God that they re-did this racetrack, because the fact that we have three or four different lanes to move up to now is so much better for this car. If we had the old track with this car we would be follow-the-leader with gaps in between each and every one of us because it's so hard to one, get this car around the track with the bumps but the aerodynamics really affect it."

Matt Kenseth is another driver who has to struggle to smile about the chassis even though he has a respectable 11 top-10s with it, though he only has five top-fives and no wins. He said he couldn't even begin to offer the car a grade for the year.

"I don't even know where to go with that -- I haven't really thought about that, I guess," Kenseth said. "From where we started to where we are right now with the program we're much better and I feel a lot better about it from a competition standpoint and how we're running compared to our competition, but the car hasn't really changed.

"We've just gotten a little bit better with it and a little bit smarter with it. It's the same for everybody. You've just got to figure out how to make yours drive better than the rest, I guess. It's different than what we had before, but yet it's still the same -- we're still trying to get it to go around the corner faster than everybody."

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is another who has decent statistics with the car, six top-fives and nine top-10s, plus two non-points victories at Speedweeks 2008. But while he was the only man who offered a grade, it was only middle-of-the-road.

"I would give it about a C or so," Earnhardt said. "There are a lot of things about it that are nice and are good. There are a lot of things about it that still need some work and hopefully the window is still cracked open for some slow change, maybe some slow, methodical evolution for this car over the next two to three years -- because it is obviously here to stay.

"I would hate to think that this is exactly how this car is going to be three years from now. I am sure there will be some things that will happen and we will learn and encounter. As we did at Atlanta [last week] being an example, we will encounter things that will show us a new and better way.

"Hopefully we aren't too bullheaded to not want to build them the right way. It has great and amazing potential and it is here to stay -- so we all might as well learn how to live in harmony with it."