Car of Tomorrow Rankling Many NASCAR Competitors
Three Car of Tomorrow races, three wins by Hendrick Motorsports.
But even the Hendrick drivers who won those races are far from sold on NASCAR's R&D baby, the COT.
After winning the first ever Car of Tommorow race at Bristol in March, Hendrick driver Kyle Busch shared his views on the vehicle with a national TV audience watching his Victory Lane celebration. "I'm still not a very big fan of these things," said Kyle Busch. "I can't stand to drive them. They suck."
Phoenix race winner Jeff Gordon, whose victory on Saturday tied him with Dale Earnhardt Sr. for sixth on the all-time win list, was circumspect about the Car of Tomorrow both before and after the race. In the garage on Thursday, Jeff Gordon told the media that the car's ability to pass was "definitely an unknown," adding that the car is costing teams more money, particularly in light of a schedule that bounces back and forth between the current Cup car and the COT. Even after winning the race, Jeff Gordon described himself as "still not sold" on the new car.
The main complaints about the Car of Tomorrow - aside from the obvious cracks about its appearance - are that it lacks grip, won't roll through the corners, and doesn't allow for much in the way of passing.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who ran in the top ten at Phoenix almost all night, complained about these very issues after the race: "I could see the leaders almost the whole race, and it was like we all were just out there running the exact same lap times. It was a parade. I was bored. No one could pass anybody else - we were all equal it seemed. No one has really figured out how to make the Car of Tomorrow turn in the center of the corners, and we struggled with that all night. For us, it was push, push, push... plow, plow, plow."
Denny Hamlin had a very dominant car at Phoenix but fell back after getting tagged for speeding on pit road. Despite working his way back up through the field from 31st to a solid third-place finish, Denny Hamlin complained bitterly about the COT in a post-race press conference where his frustration was apparent. On the issue of grip: "They built these cars to punch a bigger hole in the air. So these cars have half as much front downforce, twice as much here. So the car already doesn't have front grip. Then you have a car that's punching a bigger hole in front of it, that means even less air gets to the front end. So you've got a quarter, I mean, an eighth of the downforce that you had before." On the issue of passing: "There (were) instances out there where I would be a half a second faster than a guy. I would get within ten car lengths and automatically be slower. And that was just really frustrating as a driver. There's just not a whole lot we can do as drivers. We're at the mercy of track position right now."
Denny Hamlin also expressed pessimism about running the car on bigger tracks where aero conditions will be a greater factor. Of the three COT races thus far, two were on traditional short tracks and the third was on the PIR one-miler. "I don't know how we're going to run these cars on bigger tracks without changes," said Denny Hamlin.
Asked whether the car had succeeded in making teams competitively closer, Denny Hamlin said bluntly, "If that was the point of it, to make it more competitive for everyone, mission failed in my opinion."
Roush Racing's Greg Biffle has been another outspoken critic of the COT from his vantage point as a typically hammer-down driver. "I only saw what was around me, but it didn't look like a good race really to me," Biffle said after Phoenix. "I didn't see a lot of side-by-side. I didn't see the big, 'everybody equal.' I saw everybody sliding all over the place. And NASCAR's claim to fame is they want them hard to drive. Well, it's not that they're hard to drive, it's just that they're not like driving a race car. They're like giving us Pinewood derby cars and saying, 'OK everybody, this is what you're going to race.' "
Perhaps Crew Chief Bootie Barker summed up the competitors' frustrations best. "Anything that's bigger, heavier, taller, wider in a race car - that just doesn't add up," Barker said hours before the Phoenix race. But, he hastened to add, "We've got to deal with the thing."
And realistically, that is the bottom line for everyone, whether they like the Car of Tomorrow or hate it.
