Mark Martin ran into trouble and out of any chance for winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chase at Talladega Sunday afternoon. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The COT is a great car, starting with the safety it provides for drivers. It may drive like a manure box due to a high center of gravity and brick-hard outside tires, but it keeps the barrier of entry to the big leagues at a high level. That’s a good thing. It may be hard to adjust on pit stops, but it’s obvious teams are learning how to do that at varying rates of success. It may be butt ugly with its front splitter, extended rear overhang and wing, but the aerodynamics have produced some great racing at Daytona and Talladega. As those races go, so goes the sport.

My final swing: The racing at Talladega was pretty damned good.

If you were following a particular driver like Dale Earnhardt Jr., his progress up and down the field was, well, dramatic – as was at least one of his passes to get to the front. If you followed a driver in hopes that he would be one of the top three to come into the media center afterwards – because you’re working on a feature story on him — then Juan Pablo Montoya had a pretty exciting day, too.

At one stretch, Montoya re-started in 16th position, moved up to third 25 laps later, then traded the lead with Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin. They made these moves using good ol’ fashioned racecraft and passing techniques at an average speed of 195 mph and some bump-drafting on the straights.

It was literally during this stretch that Tony Stewart radioed in for something to keep him awake. Once Stewart decided it was time to race, it seems he was too deep in the pack and got collected by the same chain-reaction event that caught out Newman.

We’re in the day when electronic eaves-dropping and Tweets lead to a lot of perceptive monkey-see, monkey-do and monkey-think. It’s a new twist to what’s been aptly called the “celebrity industrial complex.” But don’t tell this reporter it doesn’t pay to get to the clean air up front or that everybody’s just riding around like a Sunday drive.

Three laps from the finish, when Newman’s Chevy went head-over-heels on the back straight it was clear NASCAR did the right thing in the short term. Long term, i.e. next February, there needs to be some changes to keep the COT closer to the track in all circumstances.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

– Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jingram@racintoday.com.