Have a FaceBook, Twitter, or other social networking account?

Link them to your fanatic account!

Add An Account

TAKE ME TO...
NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
BLAKE: Thinking Inside the Box
NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow is something like climate change or global warming, says RACER's Ben Blake, who notes that you can use the data to draw any conclusion you want.
Ben Blake  | http://www.racer.com  |  Posted September 05, 2007   Richmond, Va.
The boxy CoT has begun its second tour of NASCAR tracks, but the jury is still out on its effect on the racing. (LAT photo) MORE NASCAR PHOTOS

NASCAR's "Car of Tomorrow" is something like climate change or global warming. You can use the data to draw any conclusion you want, and obviously, NASCAR wants you to draw the conclusion that the spec car is the greatest thing since canned beer.

NASCAR declares three guiding principles – at least publicly – in making any change. The three principles, NASCAR's so-called three-legged stool, are safety, cost and competition. Eleven events into the new car's debut season, the data supporting the stool is open to interpretation.

The new car remains as boxy and ugly, and as shorn of visible race car identification, as it was in its first race, at Bristol in March. As is typical in racing/NASCAR, too much had changed in the time between the two Bristol races (the only repeat track so far) to draw any fair conclusions.

One thing everyone seems to accept is that the new car is safer, although the jury is still out on that one. NASCAR, in designing the new car, took some long-advised half-steps in moving toward safety, such as placing the driver toward the center of the vehicle, requiring some energy-absorbing material in crush areas, and in fueling system alterations.

But is the car itself safer? Or are other major improvements more to the credit? The two greatest safety innovations in recent racing history have almost nothing to do with the car, those being the SAFER system, which dissipates impact on contact with barrier walls, and the HANS and other head restraints.

Those two measures, now almost universally adopted, are widely credited with saving lives and protecting drivers from serious injury. Based on what I know of car safety and the CoT, NASCAR has spent six years building some small, contributory improvements into the package.

Will the new car show cost benefits to racing, and to the teams? Again, this can be argued indefinitely, and much depends on whom you talk to. Through the first season, the big teams have continued to grow and the smaller teams continue to struggle just to make the shows.

Rule A in the motorsport rule book: You can't save racers money. The old Banjo Matthews slogan, money buys speed, is no less true today than it was in the days of Vanderbilt Cups and board tracks.

NASCAR says it will limit costs by allowing for reduction in fleet size. That may or may not be true. What is known is that all CoTs approved by NASCAR must pass original inspection at the NASCAR tech center (which has the incidental effect of further centering the sport in the Charlotte area) and then pass a very tight template inspection at the tracks.



Keep track of who's hot and what's not in NASCAR each month in RACER. Ben Blake charts the rise of Martin Truex as DEI's other Jr. gets set to depart in our October issue, on sale now.


NASCAR can police the cars with as many inspections at it wants to. But competition dictates that teams, in order to win, or even to survive as businesses, must find ways to beat their rivals – hence to get around the police. The tougher you make the police work, the more expensive it becomes to get around the law.

Competition? Certainly NASCAR wants its customers to leave the premises feeling fulfilled and exhilarated. Again, however, you can argue indefinitely as to what makes for good competition. Does every race have to be a Talladega slam-banger with cars upside-down and in flames. Do enough customers appreciate a thinking-man's race, such as the duels between, say, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth?

What is good competition? I've written this one a dozen times, asking readers to email me with definitions of what makes a good race. A certain influential commentator keeps asking in his columns for NASCAR to place greater importance on racing and winning. Is that what it's all about? And if so, define it.

NASCAR will say that the intent of CoT from a competition view is to reduce dependence on aerodynamics; the new car, series officials insist, is designed to put racing back in the hands of racers. (If so, why then does NASCAR so stringently police mechanical innovation?)

Truly, we haven't had a race-day test of the new car at one of the big, aero tracks, so you really can't say whether the spec car improves racing on the 1.5- and 2-mile aero ovals. So far, CoT has been used only at tracks of a mile or less, at Darlington, and at road courses – none of which is anything like a Chicagoland or a Michigan or a California.

Certainly some aero data is available – heck, you can get aero numbers at Martinsville or New Hampshire or Sonoma. Next year, however, will begin to show how the new car behaves on the big tracks – the tracks at which FOX and ESPN graphics seek to illustrate the "aero push."

CoT this weekend at Richmond commences a streak of three races in a row for the new car – Richmond (final race before the Chase) and the first two races in the playoff, on the miles at New Hampshire and Dover. All three are due for second visits by CoT.

CoT will be used at five of the 10 playoff events – Phoenix and Martinsville included, plus the CoT intro at the restricted track at Talladega. That's a lot at stake for a product laid out without much hard back-up data from the grandstands.

Like it or not, CoT is the car of the future – to be used at all events next season, with at least partial intro of a version of it in Busch. Fortunately, NASCAR continues to present a fairly satisfactory aspect, a product even NASCAR tinkering can't completely corrupt.


The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SpeedTV.com, FOX, NewsCorp, Speed Channel, or Haymarket Worldwide.
ben_blake's avatar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Blake

MORE BY THIS AUTHOR
Advertising | Jobs | Feedback | FAQ | Terms of Use | NEW Privacy Policy | Ad Choices | Site Map
Fox Sports | FUEL TV | FX Network | National Geographic | IGN | AskMen
The Motor Sports Authority, SPEED and associated logos are registered trademarks of Speed Channel Inc.
All Rights Reserved © Speed Channel, Inc. 2012

All external links will open in a new browser window. SPEED.com does not endorse external sites.