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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Big Test Follows Big Year At Texas
Texas Motor Speedway will host a Goodyear tire test next week...
John Sturbin  |  Posted January 16, 2010   Fort Worth, TX
The 2009 Samsung 500 in April was Jeff Gordon's first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race victory at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Sprint Cup racing at Texas Motor Speedway in 2009 produced two significant talking points:

Jeff Gordon won the Samsung 500 in April, ending a maddening streak that had seen the four-time series champion go 0-for-16 (with two last-place finishes) dating to the track’s debut in 1997. And an early-race crash involving points-leader Jimmie Johnson during the Dickies 500 in November provided the last dose of Chase drama en route to J.J.’s unprecedented fourth consecutive championship.

Despite those headline-generating events by the Hendrick Motorsports superstars, TMS president Eddie Gossage admitted he’d be hard-pressed to give NASCAR’s Car of Today a passing grade for “quality of racing.”

“Probably not. I don’t think so. But I think NASCAR is trying to take steps in the right direction to address that,” Gossage said this week, anticipating a pair of potential game-altering offseason developments.

Goodyear Racing has scheduled a tire test on the 1.5-mile quadoval here on Tuesday and Wednesday, similar to the two-day session conducted this week at sister-facility Atlanta Motor Speedway. And Gossage is convinced that NASCAR, as reported earlier this week, is planning to replace the rear wing on all four COT models with a more traditional vertical, fixed spoiler blade.

“I believe it’s a done deal…after Daytona,” said Gossage, referring to the season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 14, the first of four Cup races run with a carburetor restrictor plate. “Kasey Kahne told me (Saturday night in Nashville) he thought the new spoiler would make for good racing for us. I don’t have any strong conviction on that…I defer to the drivers. But Kasey seemed to think it would make for an improvement.”

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR’s managing director of corporate communications, confirmed to RacinToday.com on Monday that the controversial rear-deck wing could be removed from the COT early this season. Additionally, the COT’s front splitter – another aerodynamic hot-button issue since the car’s debut in March 2007 – also could be “re-introduced.” NASCAR officials have been meeting face-to-face with every driver and owner in Cup on a variety of issues, including the COT.

“A lot of people don’t realize that NASCAR made more than 20 changes to the (COT) car last year, as they always do,” Gossage said. “It’s the constant massaging to try to make the car better for the variety of purposes it serves. It wasn’t widely reported and if they change this, then I give NASCAR credit for trying. They’ve always done this with anything new, and if you remember, they were constantly working on the ‘old car.’ I don’t get into a lot of competition things with NASCAR; I don’t pretend to have the knowledge they do.”

A product of NASCAR’s Research and Development Center, the bigger, boxier COT platform was designed to be a safer, more cost-efficient and performance-enhanced race car.

“As Michael McDowell showed, that’s a safer car,” said Gossage, referring to the driver’s barrel-rolling crash at TMS during qualifying for the Samsung 500 in April 2008. “That’s Job 1 (safety) and after that we have to put on a good show. Give NASCAR credit for making a change and trying to improve the product.”


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