Car of Tomorrow becomes reality for the 2008 season

The bigger and potentially safer vehicles take on
Daytona Sunday.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It’s time to find a new title for NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow.

After a 16-race preview last year, the bigger, bulkier and, hopefully, safer vehicle is now the car of today. It will be used for the entire 2008 Sprint Cup season, beginning with Sunday’s Daytona 500.

“No use complaining or worrying about it,” said Chad Knaus, the crew chief who has guided Jimmie Johnson to two straight Cup titles. “It’s what we have to work with now. NASCAR isn’t going to suddenly decide to go back to the old car.”

NASCAR originally planned to blend the CoT into the Cup schedule over three years. But, with team owners unhappy about building two different cars to race during the 2007 season, NASCAR decided to go full time with the CoT this season.

“That makes all the sense in the world,” said team owner Jack Roush. “It was just taking too many resources to build the old car and the CoT. What NASCAR did was good for everybody.”

Last year, the new car raced only on tracks shorter than 1 1/2 miles, with the exception of the road races in Sonoma, Calif. and Watkins Glen, N.Y., and the fall event at the 2.66-mile Talladega track.

After a dull race there, the only track besides Daytona where mandatory carburetor restrictor plates slow the cars, everyone’s hoping for a better show here Sunday, when the race will begin in daylight and end under the lights.

“I think they’re going to be a handful in the daylight hours,” said two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart, who finished second to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in last Saturday night’s 70-lap exhibition, the first Daytona race for the new cars. “When it cools off, I think it’s going to help everybody.

“Even though these cars get a bigger run, they don’t drive as good as the cars we’ve had here in the past. But they’re not supposed to; they weren’t designed to drive as good as the ones we’ve had in the past.”

The CoT is 2 inches taller, 4 inches wider, with a more upright windshield, and the driver’s seat was moved 4 inches to the right. NASCAR also added crumple zones on both sides, a splitter to front to produce downforce and a rear wing.

The result is a less aerodynamic car that forces drivers to work a little harder to keep them going in the right direction, particularly in the corners, and makes it harder to find an edge over the competition.

“These things can be a handful,” said four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon. “You move around a lot more than the old cars.”

The car is one of several safety initiatives begun or put on the fast track after Dale Earnhardt died in a crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

The CoT, which went from the drawing board to the racetrack in seven years, is by far the biggest project turned out so far by NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C.

But NASCAR has said safety was only one reason for introducing the new car. It’s also intended to cut costs for the teams and to improve competition.

Previously, NASCAR had different sets of templates for each manufacturer. To keep engineers and crew chiefs from getting too creative with the new cars, NASCAR has developed a unified template for all makes.

“NASCAR is keeping us in such a tight box with the templates and the grids that they have, I mean, there is no difference between the short track and this car other than you might have a brake duct behind the nose or something,” explained Tony Eury Jr., Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief.

NASCAR showed last year it was serious about keeping changes on the new bodies to a minimum, handing out big fines and docking points from teams caught making unapproved changes.

Still, team owner Richard Childress said there must be room to maneuver.

“I think we’ve got to tweak on it a little bit more, and I think NASCAR will be open-minded about doing any tweaking we’ve got to do,” Childress said. “We’ve just got to get back to side-by-side racing. That’s their goal. That’s everybody’s goal.”