This weekend a new era
in NASCAR racing will be opened, at one of the most treacherous tracks on the schedule Bristol Motor Speedway (BMS).
A track we all love to watch, Bristol
is a high banked (36° in corners) very short (.533 mi), a thrilling venue. One of the greats in Cup racing, Rusty Wallace,
has compared racing at Bristol as flying a jet in a field house. And why
is this so notable? It is the first time we will see the Car of Tomorrow (COT) in a competitive race. They have tested
the car, fine turned it, tweaked it where needed and declared it ready to race.
When the great sport
of stock car racing began the drivers would simply drive their car to the track, race it and then if possible drive it home.
Somewhere after the Second World War stock car racing got a little more sophisticated. Bill France recognized that people
would pay good money to watch the drivers and whisky haulers have at each other in a structured race, even if it were on a
beach in Florida and the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR,
was born. Over time, and a few spectacular accidents, NASCAR and the drivers have added a few safety features. They made the
battery a little more secure added a roll bar or two, but the car was still recognizable as a car that you would see on the
street. The expression “drive it on Sunday, sell it on Monday” came into being. We all recognized
the individual brands as they turned left around the ovals. There were Fords, Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Buicks, and yes
even a Hudson or two.
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As the sport grew and
the tracks became longer and hard surfaced the speeds increased, and it became obvious that other safety features were needed
and so year after year those features were added. The cars became a little more unrecognizable as NASCAR mandated first
this part then that. Hoods, back decks internal parts that can’t be seen, a little here and little there.
So as of last week the difference between the cars was very slight.
At Bristol we will see
the COT race and the only way to tell the difference in the cars is to look at the front grill; the shapes are a little different.
Well not really we all know who drives what car. We all know that Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and a few others drive Chevy’s.
The 2 and 9 cars are Dodges, the 6, 17 and 21 are Fords, and there are a few Toyotas scattered in there. Then of course there
are the decals that represent the headlights and boldly tell us which car the COT represents. But I wonder how the manufacturers
feel? It is no longer, and of course hasn’t been for a long while, the silhouette of the showroom car. But if
one squints their eyes and are far enough away they could still tell themselves that yes indeed that was a Ford, Chevy or
whatever, but no longer. Ed Hinton, another columnist has called the COT a kit car, a perfect description to my way of thinking.
The COT is touted to
be the safest Cup car ever. I do not doubt it for a minute. From what I have seen and watched on the TV the COT has
been designed with safety in mind in every way. But it sure is not a pretty car, it kind of looks like a roll-bared,
armor plated brick. With the flat front-end it will indeed slow the race down, which it was intended to do.
The manufacturers spend
millions on NASCAR for name identity. Will they continue? Let’s say you own a business selling widgets and all the widgets
in the world are mandated to come out of one factory and the parts were shipped to you and you simply assembled your widgets
as did all the other widget manufactures but the widget conglomerate specified that you could only put widgets in a box that
was a specified size with a specific thickness and all together just like all the other widget folks. And you could only put
your logo on the bottom of the box to display it on the shelf with all the other widgets for sale. Oh you could color it any
color you wanted so you and half the other widget sales groups chose red. So sitting side by side on the shelf in a long row
were a dozen identical red boxes with the logo on the bottom of the box. Just how much money would you spend to advertise
your widget?
2006 StockCar Review.
