A Year Later, COT Failure Can't Be Denied
by Michael Daly-Staff Writer
03/19/2008

With the 2008 Southeastern 500 at Bristol, the Car Of Tomorrow officially turned One Year old, and some retrospectives on the project have been published, with quotes from drivers and a few others. When one looks back on this machine, though, the one word that has to be used in description is failure - failure of promise, failure of execution, failure of concept.

The Car Of Tomorrow was introduced with several promises - that its design would reduce the aeropush; that its one-size-fits-all aerodynamic package and "Claw" supertemplate would reduce costs to teams by reducing the need for different cars for different tracks - the "20 cars for 20 different tracks" mantra was commonly uttered - and it would be a safer racecar.

The COT's failure at the first two promises is undeniable by now. The aeropush is worse now than it was before, which was to be expected with the gapped airdam design. The car's design concept of cutting downforce - by some accounts in half - was also dubious in reducing aeropush because cutting downforce has never worked at improving raceability, a lesson the failure of the old 5&5 rule in the old car should have taught everyone in the sport. The use of a wing instead of spoiler blade has also proven dubious with stability with the wing being hurt in dirty air in a way it wasn't with the old large spoiler blade. The end result is that dirty air is more of an enemy to passing now than it was before.

The cost reduction promise has also failed, with teams spending more and more on chassis changes and setups, in the process going to F1 level in the technology arms race of chassis pieces, and as shown by the Carl Edwards brouhaha after Fontana and Vegas, teams have even gone to finding creatively illegal ways to channel air for downforce.

The net result of all this is that competition has not been improved at all. Not only is the racing no better than before but prospects for new winning teams or comeback winning teams have decreased dramatically with the COT - and the phenomenon of good teams needing billionaire investors just to keep racing appears to be escalating. Jeff Gordon before Bristol made a comment about how in the back of the pack the teams had gotten closer competitively, but this is damning the COT with faint praise and it illustrates just how fraudulent the project's promises truly are.

Even in the realm of safety the COT has shown cause for concern, with several drivers being shaken in side impacts against SAFER barriers, something largely overlooked in the post-Vegas harangue about unpadded inside walls after Gordon's melee there.

The worst part of the issue is that all the testing done before the COT debuted showed the project was not going to work - literally nowhere did the COT show any improvement in raceability during testing and the problems the project was addressing were eminently solveable with bolt-on pieces - NASCAR wanted more drag on the cars, it could have gone with a 7.5-inch spoiler and roof spoiler. Yet NASCAR pressed forward with the project anyway, as though it thought it could make it work despite evidence.

It hasn't, and right now the sport is stuck with a racecar that has not lived up to any of its promises and has no potential to ever live up to them. Whether the sport eventually corrects so colossal a mistake remains to be seen.

Questions? Comments? Contact Michael Daly at stp43fan@hotmail.com

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