by Michael Daly

Created on: December 20, 2007   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

NASCAR's Car Of Tomorrow completed its debut Winston Cup season of 2007 and it enters 2008 as the designated racecar of the sanctioning body's top division, but it does so while remaining under the cloud of controversy and widespread rejection under which the vehicle debuted, with the vehicle's much-touted benefits difficult if not impossible to verify.

The racing in NASCAR's Winston Cup level in 2007 offered a striking comparison between the old racecar, sporting a long nose with a smooth flush airdam, low roofline, and shortish rear deck, and the COT, sporting a short nose with gapped airdam, taller and top-heavier roofline, longer rear deck, and use of a wing instead of blade spoiler. The grotesque committee-built design of the COT was rationalized with the argument that it would reduce aeropush, inability to turn in the air displaced by traffic - dirty air. The premise of this promise was that the old cars were too dependant on air to race with stability, and that by generating less downforce the COT would thus lose less of it in dirty air and thus be more stable and respond better in dirty air.

Nowhere, however, has this been borne out, with the COT showing itself to be tighter in traffic than the old model car. Indeed, in every COT race other than Talladega the COT responded less well in dirty air than the old car; nowhere was there any increased ability to pull up to and pass a leading car in COT races, instead the opposite was the case. NASCAR tried to "prove" that passing had increased with the COT by citing electronic timing data from varied scoring loops around racetracks, but this data was without exception useless, counting as "quality passes" situations when lapped cars on restarts fought the leaders and counting position changes between 11th and 15th as "quality passes." Nowhere did lead changes or position changes in the top ten show any increase and in fact the opposite was consistently the case.

Even at Talladega the COT was noticably less stable than the old car, and drivers responded by refusing to try and pass for position for uncharacteristically prolonged periods of Talladega's Autumn 500. The race itself was better than most, with 42 official lead changes among some 20 drivers and a refreshingly high incidence of struggling teams like Petty Enterprises, Dieter Mateschitz' #83 Toyota, and the Dodges of Chip Ganassi fighting for the lead when the drivers decided to actually fight. This, though, only partly salved the reality of the COT not

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