The Virginia 500 at Martinsville hardly qualified as a great race, and a big reason was the continuation of the Car Of Tomorrow as the drivers continued to avoid hard racing both because of increased push from the gapped front-end design and to avoid grinding off the front splitter. What kept the race close was the usual allotment of crashes, notably Juan Montoya's bully act that is getting tiresome.
NASCAR's John Darby has been point man in the spin campaign defending the COT and in such capacity is talking out his butt much of the time. He isn't the only one doing so - witness Robin Pemberton's absurd "A" grade to the COT after Bristol - but right now Darby is the more egregious here. His comments on the rash of fires from the use of foam padding in these cars is often mind-boggling and his general takes on the COT have been silly when not outright preposterous - his repeated comments about "stopping the practice of teams building 20 cars for 20 different tracks" totally ignored reality.
Incredibly, Jimmy Spencer has gone along with this nonsense (to his credit he has questioned the use of a wing instead of spoiler), criticizing drivers for "being soft" and talking about how they have to drive their cars now, never mind that they're not able to race anyone with this car.
The COT gets a respite until Phoenix, so for one week at least the sport gets back the flush-airdam/spoilered cars it has run for so long.
2 comments:
At least The Shrub won't be cursing in Texas!
olde typewriter - LOL! That's a great line, and so true.
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