For Sprint Cup teams, a testing decision looms (cont'd)

Yet NASCAR officials say a new approach to testing almost certainly would have come about even without the new car, given how much teams are testing on non-Sprint Cup tracks.

"Today you can go to Milwaukee, and work real hard for two days to try to simulate being at New Hampshire, and if all of your correlation of data is right, and if all your wisdom and educated guesses are correct, it could potentially help you in New Hampshire," Darby said. "Is that the right way to do it? I don't know. Maybe the right way to do it is to test at New Hampshire for a New Hampshire race."

That idea makes perfect sense, and has almost universal support. "We should test at the racetracks we race on," Busch said, echoing a sentiment heard throughout the garage -- and in the offices of Sprint Cup racetrack executives, who see more testing as a way to promote their events and ultimately put on a better show.

"What I want is ... to further develop these cars," Gossage said. "These are going to be fine racecars in time, but they're not fully developed. The only way to fix that is to give them more development time. And a couple of hours of practice and qualifying and then you run a race, that's not helping. We're not paying millions of dollars, and fans aren't paying millions of dollars in admissions, to watch a three-hour, 500-mile test session. They want to see a race."

Of course, more tests at Sprint Cup tracks would theoretically mean more money for Sprint Cup track operators, too. At many outside tracks like the one in Lakeland, Fla., all the teams participating typically split the facility's rental costs, which Brown said can be several thousand dollars a day. Compare that to an official, full-field Sprint Cup test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where Brown said the track charged organizations $4,000 per team per day. Gossage said testing at his Texas facility is a break-even proposition. But then again, in a world with more Sprint Cup testing, will those track rental fees remain the same?

"It's hard to say right now how aggressive SMI and ISC are going to be as far as track fees, and what the Goodyear tire costs will be," Smith said, referring to the sport's two largest racetrack companies and official tire supplier. "All the other costs are about the same, preparing your car, traveling it down the road. But where you save money is, if you have to drive to Lakeland to do your Martinsville test, the pure miles you drive, the hotels, more per diem allowances and that sort of thing. You could come out ahead. But I wouldn't anticipate that this is some great cost-savings scenario."

The trick to all this, of course, is how to implement it. The smaller teams in the Sprint Cup garage are understandably edgy about what kind of testing policy they're going to get. Unlimited testing would clearly place them further behind, something the sanctioning body cannot let happen. Even a more limited policy would hurt if NASCAR restricted testing by car and not by organization, allowing a team like Hendrick Motorsports to test four times for every Bill Davis Racing's one. Brown has an idea: one team, one test. If Jeff Gordon goes to Talladega, that counts for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, too -- anything more than that could swamp his sponsor-strapped organization.

But even smaller teams seem to support testing on the tracks they race on, an idea that makes too much sense not to happen, and if implemented fairly could give some of the have-nots more of a chance of being competitive. Tracks outside the Sprint Cup circuit can certainly use the money from testing fees, and are surely going to take a financial hit. But if NASCAR and its teams are ever going to see eye-to-eye on the new car, a subject of endless friction and duress, then a more liberal testing policy is a necessity.

"There are some things that can be done there to control the costs," Brown said. "And really, you have airplanes, you have travel, you have hotels, you have all those things involved regardless of where you're going. So if we're going to do it, and everybody does it, let's go places that will help the competition be better."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer