The Continuing COT Soap Opera

It may be the off-season as far as NASCAR goes but the reality is there is no such thing as an off-season anymore; teams build cars, test, and do everything short of racing during the interregnum between Homestead and Daytona.

The 2006-7 interregnum has taken on added importance because of the scheduled debut of the Car Of Tomorrow, the unpopular car/Truck hybrid scheduled to run 16 of 36 races in 2007. The importance of this off-season, though, has taken on more of the flavor of a soap opera as the rumor has raged that NASCAR will delay scheduled implementation of the COT, a rumor denied by Robin Pemberton of NASCAR. The denial, though, only stokes the rumor more, for it shows the truism that where's there's smoke, there's fire.

The truth of the matter is that the Car Of Tomorrow has been confounding its NASCAR creators to the point that a serious alteration of its 2007 schedule may be inevitable, whether through delay of its debut or a reduction in the number of races it runs. The costs involved and the great difficulty many teams have had in building them are just part of the issue; the bigger issue ultimately comes back to the machine's basic utility as a racecar.

Designed to be safer and less aero-dependent than present-generation racecars, the Car Of Tomorrow has consistently failed in on-track testing; nowhere has the car shown any improved ability to pass compared to present-day cars, and aero-dependency has arguably been worsened with the car's design. Certainly the gapped airdam with splitter practically begs for aeropush, while the rear wing has proven nothing as far as improved ability in dirty air. And the mythology the COT was built around - that the Craftsman Trucks are the best racing in NASCAR and that the cars should thus be squared up - is just that....mythology. The reality is the Craftsman Truck Series long ago wore out its novelty and has not provided that much memorable racing over most of its twelve seasons.

There is also the reality that NASCAR has created the COT to solve problems that have far simpler solutions. One of the most glaring examples lay in the gapped airdam with splitter; it is designed to deter use of ultra-soft springs in the front, springs that cost in four figures. But if NASCAR is that determined to prevent their use, why not simply issue less expensive springs to teams at the track every week? Granted this may not be the most ideal solution, but it's certainly far less expensive and more practical than the COT.

NASCAR's approach to the COT is reminiscent of NASA. Gregg Easterbrook has noted that NASA "constantly investigates low-cost Shuttle alternatives, finds a way to make them expensive, then abandons the project." This is a good encapsulation of NASCAR's inefficient approach to solving problems in general and to the COT in particular.

Under Brian Z. France NASCAR has pushed bad ideas and stuck with them despite manifest realworld evidence of their ineffectiveness - the Chase For The Championship is of course the signature example. Here, though, the reality of the idea's failure is beginning to catch up to NASCAR - dropping TV ratings and track attendence show no signs of improving as long as the Chase remains, and this inevitably adds up in lost revenue for the sport. The other major bad idea the sport has pushed - schedule realignment and its direct by-product in tracks in New York City and Kitsap, WA - has hit a dead-end, and thus the fundamental unsoundness of a bad idea has begun to catch up to NASCAR.

For the Car Of Tomorrow, that there has been so much trouble getting models built is yet another sign of a bad idea's fundamental unsoundness starting to catch up to NASCAR. Chances are there will be some races in 2007 where the COT competes in anger (a proposed usage of COTs in a non-points race at Daytona has been proposed), but even here there is reason to think that NASCAR may wind up with second thoughts about this bad idea, for Pemberton's denials notwithstanding, there is too little to gain from sticking with the Car Of Tomorrow.