COT and Hauler issues

One of the big controversies about the Car of Tomorrow concerned the race haulers, the 53-foot tractor-trailers teams use to haul cars to and from the track. Last year, when team owners were fighting the CoT concept tooth and nail, one of their prime objections was that the taller CoTs would necessitate wholesale replacement of the pricey trailers. NASCAR insisted that wasn’t true. So what’s the real story? Newer trailers—those made in the last two years—have a lowered upper deck floor that accommodates the new, taller cars just fine. But some of the smaller teams that use older trailers have to replace the race tires on their CoTs to get them to fit. For example, BAM Racing, which fields cars for Mike Bliss, has a set of tire innerliners that it puts on Bliss’s CoT to get it to fit in the trailer. The innerliners, of course, aren’t as tall as the regular race tires. At least one other team uses production street tires when it loads its CoT. One other footnote about the trailers: The average life expectancy of a NASCAR Nextel Cup trailer is about 3-4 years. At the end of its life cycle, technology has advanced enough that teams want new features and configurations in their trailers. Ford Racing