Drivers dislike Car of Tomorrow
Former champions Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth would like to see NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow be just that — a car for the future, not 2007. Gordon and Kenseth were among drivers who tested Tuesday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The three-day test session, which concludes Wednesday, is the final NASCAR-sanctioned test of 2006.
Five of the 20 participating teams brought their COTs to Homestead-Miami. The COT will make its limited debut in 2007, and although it strives to be fast on the racetrack it appears to be slow to win converts among drivers.
"I'll admit, I'm not a big fan of the Car of Tomorrow," said Gordon, a four-time champion. "I think there's some technology in there that's good. Certainly safety-wise, I think there's some things that I like."
Gordon's Hendrick Motorsports team didn't bring its COT to Homestead-Miami, but Gordon did participate in the test session at Michigan International Speedway earlier in the year.
Kenseth, the 2003 champion, also tested the COT at Michigan. "I wasn't very impressed by any of it, really," Kenseth said Tuesday. "I think they're going to be a lot different to set up. It looks like a normal car, but setting it up I think there's going to be a lot more engineering and more expense involved to figure out what these cars need to run fast."
The way the car looks is also an issue, they said.
"It's funny," Kenseth said. "You're out here (and) the normal car looks like a racecar, and you catch (a COT) and it kind of looks like a school bus or something. It looks really, really strange, so it is going to take some getting used to."
"The biggest issue I have with the car is it doesn't look like a racecar," Gordon said. "To me, (when) I think of a Car of Tomorrow, I think of the ingenuity, technology. … But I think we could have done it by also making it look like the Car of Tomorrow. Have some futuristic things in it that look cool. It doesn't have that."
10/17/06 We hear that several very prominent NASCAR Cup drivers are disgusted with NASCAR's new Car of Tomorrow. Two drivers, who shall remain anonymous but between them have over 5 Cup championships to their credit, say, "That it both pushes and is loose at the same time and it is too susceptible to aero changes." So much so that making a chassis change during the race will lose its importance. The other said that, "It pushes too much as well and that it is ugly. They use to call Cup Cars Taxi Cabs awhile back. The COT looks like a Taxi Cab."
It's quite possible that the younger generation, who are into high-tech modern and sleek 'stuff' who reject NASCAR, further hastening its recent plummet.