VW Diesel Buyers Could Have Discovered Cheating Before the EPA Did

What stopped them is the myth that people should not be allowed to fix their own cars.

Phoenix Early Bad News For Gen-6

Phoenix has been run and NASCAR's Generation Six racecar got its first test on a track a mile or less, and Carl Edwards grabbed his first win since March 2011,  but the result for NASCAR's ballyhooed new racecar was decisively poor.

The Gen-6 was in development for some three years, yet passing was as rare with this car as it was with the COT, and there was literally no sign that this new car has solved any of the sport's competition issues. "Clean air is probably more important than ever," said Brad Keselowski; "It did not race as good as our generation-five cars" (aka the COT, which raced poorly) said Denny Hamlin; Jimmie Johnson half-jokingly recommended leaving the cars alone for 20 years.


Making it worse was another chapter in tire trouble with Goodyear, which brought a harder compound (particularly on left sides) yet saw multiple tire failures, notably right fronts.

 It begs the question that has plagued the sport for now over a decade - why can NASCAR not get these racecars to where they WANT to race in dirty air, where passing and repassing are NOT the exception, to where racing like in the Daytona 300 is the norm?

And it begs the question - is John Darby the problem?   It has been painfully clear from the start that Darby has grossly misread the sport's competition issues  and continues to do so; an ardent supporter of the COT, Darby has been in charge of the garage area yet has curiously gone without criticism from the racing media. 

Certainly the high-ups at Daytona have failed again and Darby warrants criticism of his role in NASCAR's continuing failure to redress the sport's competition woes.    Phoenix may be one race, but the Gen-6 was unimpressive at Daytona and was even less impressive at Phoenix, with no evidence to believe it can make things better at Vegas or down the line.

Winston Cup's Future Explodes Forth

The Car Of Tomorrow is now the car of today as Speedweeks 2008 kicks off, and after just one day we've had two wrecks, a near-brawl, and continuing signs the Car Of Tomorrow will not live up to any of its promises. Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart can be expected to wipe out the field and fight each other afterward, and the wreckage from just practice doesn't fill one with confidence in the rest of the week.

COT Still Makes No Sense

The COT ran at Talladega in early October and the resulting race was hardly a ringing endorsement of the car, despite some excellent racing overall. This was supposed to be the big proving ground of success with the COT and it wasn't. Which isn't surprising as the car has consistently failed at literally every goal assigned to it.

For Talladega, one goal was to eliminate expensive restrictor plate intake manifolds; the opposite is happening as teams build new such manifolds, making nonsense of the car's advertised cost reductions in that area.

And with ratings and attendence continuing to slip, the sport's COT gamble is proving a bad one. What NASCAR does now remains a mystery given the seeming lack of idea how to handle failure like this that permeates the sanctioning body.

In NASCAR, Bad Leadership Makes Bad Choices

NASCAR gets a reprieve of sorts this weekend when Talladega returns to the schedule for its second weekend of the season. It is a welcome reprieve from months of subpar racing, despite some spurts of good competition at Charlotte, Pocono, Michigan, Indianapolis, Fontana, and Kansas.

But it is the first superspeedway race for the Car Of Tomorrow - the pig, as some are calling it - and throw into the mix the entry of F1 champ turned open wheel washout Jacques Villeneuve, whose career the last few years has been an embarassment and whose overall personality is a complete waste of time dealing with. Of course this is assuming Jacques Clouseau-Villeneuve even makes the race.

But the fact he is even entered, combined with Dario Franchitti's pending arrival and the continued employment of Juan Montoya - involved in another wreck, this one at Kansas - illustrates trends the sport is seeing that aren't good for it. Some of those trends are illustrated here and when you add in more dubious decisions made for the sport of recent - such as increasing incompetence in officiating - it shows what should be obvious in any endeavor - bad leadership makes bad choices.

The New England Patriots saw it with Chuck Sullivan, and Brian France is so reminiscent of Chuck Sullivan that it's frightening.

Plenty Of Subplots At New Hampshire

The New England 300 came and saw a surprisingly good finish, and with it we saw quite a few subplots, some of which may carry over to subsequent races. Among the subplots from this Loudon outing -


*** Some more cheating going on? Kyle Busch and Johnny Sauter measured too low, the situation that cost Brian Vickers a starting spot on Friday. The cars in question were impounded to be examined at NASCAR's R&D center, and one can hold reasonable expectation of a fine.

*** The loosening of DEI. Dale Junior's announcement a few weeks back appears to have looened up everyone at DEI, and the organization has suddenly run more crisply. This race for much of the day was a DEI clinic as the two Juniors, Earnhardt and Truex, led 110 laps total but had nothing for Denny Hamlin at the end.

*** JGR gets off the skids. Though Tony Stewart didn't have a great finish and J.J. Yeley continues to stumble with mediocre runs, Denny Hamlin put the organization back into victory with their two-tire stop in the final 50 laps. Given how strong the JGR effort had been in the COT races, it's a bit surprising that it took this long to win one.

*** Ganassi/SABCO Racing versus Bobby Labonte - Labonte and Juan Montoya ran in close proximity late in final practice and traded a couple of passes. By race standards it wasn't anything noteworthy, but it seemed curiously heated for a practice session. It turned out ot be a harbinger, as Labonte and Montoya wound up in close proximity at points during the race's second half and Ganassi teammate David Stremme got into the mix on a late wreck with Labonte. From that spin the normally-smooth Labonte was smoking his brakes at times clawing past other cars, and he finished off his race by gunning past Montoya for 18th.

*** Robby Gordon snakebit again - "The alternator got us," he said afterward. The alternator shut off around Lap 180 - and begs a question I've long had; what are teams doing that so frequently kills the alternators they run? That he limped home 17th was noteworthy bceause he ran better than that most of the day.

*** The COT, always the COT - "I'd like to know who it was that said this car would reduce the aeropush," Jeff Gordon said afterward, "because I could have told you from the first time I drove this car that it would make the aeropush worse." Matt Kenseth added, "it's probably more about track position with these cars than with the old ones....the fastest car didn't win. The guy who got two tires got out front and won..."

*** Ray Who? - Ray Evernham entered three cars in this race; two made the race and neither made any noise. Kasey Kahne drifted backward to 25th and Elliott Sadler did even worse.

*** Pit penalties - Ricky Rudd and Greg Biffle each got busted for speeding twice. It wasx a strange day for pit penalties.


In all it added to another subplot-filled race leading to one bound to have even more subplots as the Cup guys hit Daytona again.

COT's Bizarre Version of Logic

The COT doesn't run at Charlotte this weekend, but its presence looms large noentheless, and the non-logic behind the COT and with John Darby in general helps explain why so clear a mistake has continued.

COT Numbers Don't Tell The Story

I knew this would happen. We now have in T.J. McCarthy a writer citing NASCAR scoring loop data to make a COT race look more competitive than it actually was. McCarthy compiles scoring loop data on "quality" passes and shows where there have been three races where there were more "quality" passes with the COT than with the "older" flush airdam/spoilered cars.

Scoring loop data is inherently deceptive because it counts as "quality" passes any kind of position change in the top-15, even if lapped cars pass cars running in the top-15 - which happens a lot at Darlington as cars short-pit and get fresh tires on the track's notoriously rough surface. There is always position passing and lapped cars interfering with lead-lap cars outside the top-ten; it's in the top ten that passing matters most, and at Darlington the top ten hardly changed hands all race long and was usually spread out over nearly half the track, a pattern seen at all the other COT races so far.

And as far as lead changes go, the COT hasn't made any kind of dent in the sport's Dead-Lane Era. 21 lead changes in a 500 mile race is hardly impressive unless the lead bounces around several times a lap, as has happened at places like Pocono - the 1990 Summer 500 had 21 official lead changes and over a dozen unofficial ones, including four lead changes on Lap 117 alone and three on Lap 180 - but which manifestly didn't happen at Darlington or any other COT race. NASCAR counted 673 "quality" passes at Darlington - but there were only 21 lead changes, and nowhere did the lead change more than once a lap.

This is where scoring loop data is worse than useless. First of all, these stats are compiled for all those fantasy geeks that have permeated pro sports' fanbases like poison over this decade - that hilarious NFL Network ad with the fantasy geek who can't pronounce T.J. Houshmenzedah's name isn't entirely exaggerating what fantasy geeks are about. Second, as McCarthy is doing, NASCAR is using this data to make its races to be better than they actually are.

"Give it time," McCarthy claims. "The smartest people in racing are working on a solution." McCarthy makes the classic mistake of flattering John Darby, Brett Bodine, Gary Nelson, and others involved with this project as smarter than they actually are. The COT has gone through over a year of testing and now five races and it has shown zero improvement. That fantasy-geek data cited by McCarthy doesn't tell the real story, which is that passing is down with the COT, as the car cannot turn, pushes worse in dirty air than the older car, and is hamstrung from improvement by its fundamentally unsound design. You can't get good racing out of a racecar design with a bulky roofline, short nose, gapped airdam, long rear deck, and use of a wing.

There was also a lot of nonsense about how "tough" the COT was, though that gets debunked here. Few noticed how much more sensitive to spinning out the COT proved to be at Darlington - when McCarthy starts talking about how the leaders all slapped the wall and kept going, "tell me that isn't old school." No, it isn't, because the COT resisted turning. Not being able to turn is not old school.

The COT "has lost 30 to 40 percent of the handling," noted Jimmie Johnson after the Southern 500. With so little passing at any of its races despite Tom McCarthy's pathetic attempt to use deceptive scoring loop data to argue otherwise, the car has had enough time to prove itself, and it has failed.

John Darby Keeps Talking Out His Butt

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.

How Good Is Old School?

MD80891 makes good points in discussing the COT spin campaign that began almost as soon as the checkered flag fell at Bristol. Among the points he makes is the repeated use of the term "old school" by defenders of the COT. It is worth examining because there is a very romanticized view of Old School racing and one needs to look back to see how much of that romanticized view is really relevent to the present.

An argument often made is that "back in the day" the racers had to really drive their cars, had to manhandle their cars, etc. whereas modern drivers simply aim their cars, do not have to exert themselves as much, and so forth. What this argument so often ignores is that back in the day there were quite a few differences in the cars compared to today - they were substantially heavier; they ran bias-ply tires which could be "raced" differently from radials, a difference still seen today at tracks such as NHIS where Busch East cars run bias-plies when running companion races with Winston Cup, BGN, and Trucks; a lot of the limits placed on the cars today, such as sway bar size and mounting, were not issues back then; template rules were far more relaxed by today's standards; and the cars had just over half the horsepower of present cars. They were thus some five or more seconds a lap slower at virtually all the tracks compared to today.

There were also some important differences to some of the tracks, Bristol in particular. It had an asphalt surface that was frequently treated with sealer to prevent cracking. It was notorious for forcing cars to run the high grooves and when cars wanted to race side by side they did so with more frequency than on concrete surfaces.

When discussing aerodynamics a common argument is that the cars back then didn't run as much spoiler etc. as today, an argument that ignores that spoiler sizes increased as the cars got faster and less stable; when NASCAR faced issues of car stability it answered by increasing downforce, and it consistently worked. The "old school" revisionism of today ignores that the drivers then wanted more, not less, grip for their cars, and teams worked to get more grip - indeed, Kyle Busch's postrace blast at the COT at Bristol mirrored driver complaints about the cars they'd had to switch to early in 1978 - "The Dodge Magnum is undriveable at 190," Richard Petty said while Donnie Allison said, "I can't drive the Olds, it moves around too much." Cale Yarborough said in Daytona qualifying, "I couldn't hold my breath any longer, you wouldn't believe how unstable the car is." NASCAR increased spoiler size to get the cars stable, and things more or less settled down.

The simple fact is that Old School racing was often better than today, but it was never because of lack of stability or lack of grip; the cars had as much grip as was possible back then. Certainly "back in the day" the answer to issues of competition was never to punish aggressive racing or setups; it was never to cut downforce.

The implicit notion is that "Old School" drivers would not want more grip for their cars, would not want this or that, etc. This, though, ignores that racers want to be able to race in a car that sticks to the track and can take the lead of the race; the old school fought for more downforce and so forth as much as today's generation of racers.

Nostalgia for the old school isn't a bad thing, until it is distorted to justify a bad rules package. The Old School was cited to defend the varied incarnations of the failed 5&5 rule and is being used again to justify the COT. When this happens then "old school" becomes unrecognizible.

Southeastern 500 Winners And Losers

The Southeastern 500 of 2007 has been run and Kyle Busch survived a late scare from Jeff Burton for his first win of the season. Being the debut race of NASCAR's SpecCar/Car Of Tomorrow it has gotten unusually tight attention, and a listing of winners and losers is in order.

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WINNERS -

HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS - Two of their cars could either struggle or hit the wall and yet the Hendrick fleet has enough depth to win and finish in the top three. Jeff Gordon's rally from a mediocre mid-portion of the race was somewhat surprising given that his effort over the past year has been more uneven than it had been over the course of his career. Casey Mears, meanwhile, recovered from several incidents and finished an encouraging tenth.

RCR ENTERPRISES - Kevin Harvick had a dismal qualifying session, yet through pit cycling and some hard running he finished fourth. Jeff Burton, meanwhile, nearly stole the whole show at the end with an audacious restart in the final laps, passing Jeff Gordon high with two to go. Clint Bowyer, meanwhile, went largely unnoticed en route to a solid eighth place.

JEFF GREEN - Strong all weekend, Green finally got breaks his way to finish sixth.

JAMIE McMURRAY - The black sheep of the Roush/Fenway fleet finally surged forward in a race and hung tough all day.

CARL EDWARDS - Over the last year-plus seeing Carl Edwards running strong has become less and less frequent, but here he was mixing it up well after his BGN win.

BRIAN VICKERS and MIKE BLISS - Just making the race was an accomplishment; running strong all day was even better.

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But with winners, we have plenty of losers -

LOSERS -

THE CAR OF TOMORROW - Finally fans got to see what a year of testing indicated - the car races poorly in dirty air. Kyle Busch made that point abundantly clear. Literally no one could get the car balanced properly and anyone from fifth on back was largely DOA as far as catching the leaders went. For the entirety of the race the drivers could ill-afford to race aggressively; of course being Bristol this fact could be explained away, but the COT's punishment of aggressive racing and setups nonetheless showed itself to all.

ROBERT YATES RACING - All of a sudden David Gilliland is falling off the map; the wreck can't be blamed on him but it comes amid less and less muscle being displayed in his racing. Ricky Rudd meanwhile looks just plain poor in that racecar.

RAY EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS - They all qualified superbly and for awhile raced well, but blown tires and wrecks wiped out any chance of a decent finish.

JOE GIBBS RACING - This is one that will haunt the organization for awhile. First Tony Stewart has the race in his hip pocket and then a fuel pump cable breaks and he loses 25 laps. Then Denny Hamlin takes over but late in the race gets waylaid in lapped traffic and loses the lead, then almost wrecks on a late restart and loses the top ten.

DAVID RAGAN - Welcome to Bristol, David - did your dad Ken ever talk about this place?

JUAN MONTOYA - He was one of the few drivers actually trying to make something happen, and it cost him big time; that he only lost seven laps is amazing.

MICHAEL WALTRIP RACING - Talladega headline - "MICHAEL WALTRIP RACING A NO-GO AT TALLADEGA: Former track winners Waltrip, Jarrett once again fail to qualify" - yes, chances are it's come down to this for Dale Jarrett.

ROBERT GINN RACING - Regan Smith took over for Mark Martin as scheduled, but it was a bad weekend for the organization as Joe Nemechek failed to make the race and both Smith and Sterling Marlin had subpar days.

DODGE - The highest-finishing Dodge was David Stremme in 12th. It was a bad day all around - Ganassi's Avengers aside from Stremme wrecked or spun; Evernham's guys wrecked; Petty's two Dodges could never get out of traffic; and Penske's Panzers resembled George Peppard's flame-thrower scenes in Tobruk.

NASCAR - NASCAR was a loser not just because of the poor showing of the COT, it was also a loser with AT&T's lawsuit over NASCAR's ban on use of its logos on Jeff Burton's car. It brings back reminder that NASCAR is overstepping badly in dictating to sponsors instead of welcoming them with open arms.

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So now the SpecCar travels to Martinsville, and chances are its weaknesses as a racecar will be exacerbated by Martinsville's hairpin flatness.

Stay tuned for more verbiage like from Kyle Busch after winning the Southeastern 500.

Bristol Debuts SpecCar

NASCAR's Car Of Tomorrow arrives at Bristol for real this weekend, and will certainly be the most micro-inspected NASCAR project in memory. In these analyses we will hear a lot about how the use of a wing instead of spoiler reduces turbulence behind a car and thus theoretically allow a trailing car to close up to pass. Never cited, however, is any example of passing increasing due to reduced turbulence. On the contrary, Indycar racing experience has proven that the opposite is the case, especially on superspeedways, where adding air-displacement devices and/or simply bulking up the bodies to generate more turbulence was what increased passing - yes, that pesky draft again, guys. It would seem that IRL has had to relearn that lesson as it reduced drag on its rear wings in 2006 but may be adding it back for 2007.

There is also the theory that the design will eliminate the variances in individual car designs so that teams can reuse superspeedway cars on short tracks and vice versa. No one, though, seems to be asking just what all those engineers on the sport's mega-teams are supposed to do with the Car Of Tomorrow. Can anyone buy the notion that these engineers are not going to attack the COT's tolerances and slice open holes to exploit and thus kill NASCAR's much-hoped cost reduction?

Then there is the fundamental unsoundness of the design. It is said the car will evolve, but given this it is impossible not to see it evolving back to what the cars have been for the last ten-plus years now - with a flush airdam, chopped roof, spoiler instead of a wing, etc. This basic design has proven itself sound.

While we'll need to see the race to start getting some answers, one thing should be certain - if the Car Of Tomorrow produces any kind of quality racing, it will be the biggest surprise in the sport in years.

A Superior COT Analysis

Check out this superior analysis of the Spec Car.

Bristol COT Test

Bristol ran the COT's most recent pre-competition test session during the late-winter bye week for Winston Cup, and it allowed teams and drivers to further shake down these cars before their debut at the end of March.

The test produced several incidents, notably Ward Burton's crash during an added night session on the first day of testing and Clint Bowyer's wreck late in the test. It also saw teams attacking front-end grip to keep the splitter off the ground. The speeds as expected were noticably off the track record, but then the cars will be faster than what they were in this test come late-March's Southeastern 500.

Some drivers expressed surprise at how well the cars drove, but what was interesting was what was not said - no indication was given that the cars race well. In fact, the consensus seemed to be that the cars don't race well. Of course being Bristol it isn't the best venue to gauge long-term raceability with these cars - and in this test only twelve cars were ever on the track at any point of the test - but it nonetheless can tell us something, and that there seemed indication that the car does not race well seems in keeping with the running theme of COT testing - the car's inferior raceability in dirty air. And given how important it will be to keep the splitter off the ground, it seems unlikely that truly raceable setups will proliferate come the Southeastern 500.

Of course the mantra was repeated that "The COT is here," but there remains no guarantee that it will stay here. Given shrinkage in attendence and TV ratings, the sport is taking a chance with the COT and had better have a backup plan for the project's likely failure to live up to its hype.

What the Bristol test seemed to confirm is one of the key problems with the COT - it punishes aggressive driving and aggressive setups. Those, though, are the kind of driving and setups that make good racing; conservative driving and setups has never made good competitive racing. This bottom line is a bottom line NASCAR can ill-afford to have to relearn.

More On The COT

Check this look at the COT as its debut is a month away.

Daytona Testing Resumes

Daytona testing resumed after the Trucks took their turn, and it was a good mixture of speeds up top. David Gilliland timed first on Day One of this second test, but that's irrelevent given Gilliland's lack of killer instinct in his handful of Winston Cup starts, a bad sign for his career, as one can calm down an aggressive driver but one cannot fire up a weak driver.

Juan Montoya as expected saw his technology savvy help Ganassi/SABCO Racing, as they posted 1-2 on the Tuesday AM speed charts. Of the other Dodges, Elliott Sadler was 6th on the cumulative chart, Kyle Petty was 16th, and the Penske Dodges surprisingly sluggish at 18th (Ryan Newman, beginning the post-Matt Borland era) and 20th (Kurt Busch).

Toyota had five cars and the BDR Camrys as expected topped the Toyota charts; Mike Skinner was 7th on the cumulative chart and Jeremy Mayfield slipped from second on Monday to 11th on Tuesday. Michael Waltrip's Toyotas were less impressive as David reutimann was 17th and Mikey only 21st. The Red Bull team, meanwhile, was just 24th with A.J. Allmendinger, who was replaced in a pre-planned swap by Brian Vickers.

RCR was sluggish as they were last week - Clint Bowyer was 13th while Jeff Burton was a distant 26th on the cumulative chart; this is one area where the speeds may portend something later, as RCR made big horsepower gains in 2006 with the hiring of Cosworth engine builders.

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Once the drafting session began everything changed. The Penske Dodges were 1 and 3 while David Reutimann was 7th, the only Toyota in the top 20 in drafting speeds. Elliott Sadler and Juan Montoya were in the top-15 for Dodge while David Stremme was 18th and Kyle Petty a dismal 28th. The RCR Chevys, meanwhile, continued to unimpress with dismal drafting speeds for Clint Bowyer (22nd) and Jeff Burton (30th).

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The real story of testing, however, was that Penske Racing will bring their Spec Cars to Daytona to run a special test to determine gearing for restrictor plate Spec Car races. This comes amid a new PR push by NASCAR for the Spec Car led by Brett Bodine's public Q&A session with fans which didn't appear to address many substantive issues with the car's raceability; one questioner discussed Dale Earnhardt passing 18 cars in the final five laps of the 2000 Autumn 500 and apparantly no mention was made that that came with a roof spoiler package that blasted open a far more effective and consistent draft than is possible with a wing or the basic shape of the Spec Car. It also appears no serious discussion was made about the gapped airdam that makes the car push in dirty air. Bodine for his part parrotted the company line that there will be no reevaluation of the Spec Car after it's run some races, which is impossible to believe given how poorly the car has done in testing.

The drafting session for Daytona testing is due soon, and here we'll get some clue about raceability.

NASCAR Aerodynamics: A Short History

Amid all the controversy over the Car Of Tomorrow, it's worth looking back at the history of NASCAR aerodynamics, especially when one considers that the modern aerowars of NASCAR dated back 40 years ago this past season.

In 1966 NASCAR's factory wars had hit a rough stretch following the Chrysler boycott of 1965; the 1966 season would be marred by a Ford boycott. At Daytona Speedweeks, though, the Ford and Mopar contingents were out in full force following Dan Gurney's Riverside victory in the Wood Brothers Ford. Richard Petty dominated the 500 and this began a strong comeback year for Chrysler's Motor Parts division after the '65 boycott.

Largely unnoticed at that time, however, the 1966 Daytona 500 saw the introduction of a new bodystyle that would ignite a war of aerodynamics that would rage on and off for decades thereafter. The 1966 Dodge Charger was quite different from the other bodies campaigning the 500 - the nose was flatter than the other brands and the roofline and trunk area were one single sloped piece. The Charger campaigned primarily on big tracks, and in the first half of the season the car proved unstable. By the Firecracker 400 NASCAR had allowed Dodge teams to fit a tab, about two inches in height, to the rear deck to trap air onto the trunk area and thus stabilize the car. This rear spoiler proved valuable as Sam McQuagg drove Ray Nichels' Charger to victory.

Leeroy Yarbrough won the National 500 in Jon Thorne's Charger and Buddy Baker drove Ray Fox's #3 Charger to win the 1967 National 500; most Mopar big-track wins, however, still came with Plymouths, notably Petty Enterprises victory in the 1966 World 600 with Marvin Panch and three wins at Darlington with Richard Petty; Tom Friedkin's #14 Plymouth meanwhile added a dramatic comeback win in the 1967 600 with Jim Paschal.

Though the Charger was hardly a dominant car, its aerodynamic sleekness was directly copied by Ford for the 1968 season. Ford debuted fastback Ford Torinos and Mercury Cyclones, sporting the exact same body shape of the Charger 500 but with narrower side windows. Ford fought long and hard all season with Mopar and dominated the superspeedways; only the two Charlotte races, won by Buddy Baker in the Fox #3 and Charlie Glotzbach in Everett "Cotton" Owens' #6, went to Mopar that year; both were won in 1968 Dodge Chargers, sporting longer noses and flatter trunk areas than the '66-7 Charger.

When Richard Petty switched his Plymouth team to Ford for 1969, Chrysler went to work to reclaim the superspeedways, and in September came out with the most famous aero warrior ever to hit stock car racing - the Dodge Daytona, a shark-nosed high-winged monster that easily set new speed records. The Daytona ran four big-track races in late 1969, winning the boycott-marred Talladega 500 (Richard Brickhouse in the Ray Nichels #99) and the season-ending Texas 500 (Bobby Isaac in the Nord Krauskopf-Harry Hyde #71).

Chrysler then built Plymouth's twin to the Daytona - the 1970 Superbird, sporting a slightly wider nose than the Charger. Intended almost entirely to win back Petty, it succeeded, and Petty got the backing to run two cars on big tracks. Pete Hamilton bested David Pearson in the Daytona 500, then swept Talladega. Richard, meanwhile, recovered from a spin to win at Rockingham, then dominated Riverside, then took down wins at Trenton, the Dixie 500 at Atlanta, and Dover in the Superbird. The Daytona, meanwhile, won the Atlanta 500 with Bobby Allison in Mario Rossi's #22, the Yankee 400 at Michigan by with Charlie Glotzbach in Ray Nichels' purple #99, and the Southern 500 by Buddy Baker in the Cotton Owens #6.

But the 1969 Talladega boycott continued to affect the sport in 1970 because the speeds involved on the speedways was a major factor in that boycott; it was after testing in mid-summer that Bobby Allison, Bobby Isaac, David Pearson, and Paul Goldsmith suggested a power restrictor for carburators to slow the cars. At the Yankee 400 NASCAR debuted the restrictor plate, run on all tracks the rest of that season and on and off until mid-1974.

Ford's decision after 1970 to withdraw from the sport led to Chrysler's drastic cutback to two cars in 1971 and abandonment after that. NASCAR also restricted the winged Mopars to running 300-CID engines in hope they would be abandoned. The 1971 Daytona 500 nonetheless saw Mario Rossi campaign a Daytona with Dick Brooks as driver, and the car fought for the lead and came home in the top ten despite wreck damage. NASCAR then banned the winged cars outright; only on USAC's stock car tour did the winged cars continue; among wins for USAC winged stock cars was Roger McClusky at Pocono in 1972 in a Plymouth Superbird.

Even without the winged cars, though, the aeroization of the sport by 1971 had been astonishing. 1969 Mercuries were campaigned by most Ford teams while Mopars had the 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner or Dodge Charger, both arguably the best balanced cars aerodynamically, with the Dodge having a slight edge due to a sleeker nose. Between the bodies and the use of restrictor plates, the draft that had been notably less effective in the previous four or five years came back with a vengeance, seen in 48 official lead changes, an all-time motorsports record to that point, at the '71 Daytona 500. The draft was also effective at the new Ontario Motor Speedway two weeks later as the lead changed 28 times officially and more than that unofficially.

Charlotte Motor Speedway president Richard Howard, however, introduced a new angle in May with a 1971 Chevrolet driven by Charlie Glotzbach. The Chevy, built by Junior Johnson after he'd liquidated all his Ford equipment, bore some aerodynamic resemblence to the Plymouth Roadrunner and was competitive out of the gates, leading 70 laps at the World 600 and campaigning 13 races that year, winning at Bristol.

The 1970s were for the most part devoid of major aerodynamic changes. Chevrolet evolved into the common means of competitive transportation by 1975, and in that year a subtle change was made, as the slope-nosed Laguna S3 debuted at the Daytona 500 and won with Benny Parsons and the L.G. DeWitt #72 team. Used most often, though, was the notch-back mid-70s Monte Carlo, whose greater frontal resistance compared to cars like the Laguna or even the 1974 Dodge Charger provided a handling edge on the majority of tracks.

The late 1970s did see a significant aerodynamic change. For the 1978 season NASCAR banned the Laguna S3; it also allowed teams to campaign Chevrolet engines for the 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 and Buick Regal and Lesabre. The Western 500 at Riverside that January was a smorgasboard of body styles including Olds Cutlasses, '74 Dodge Chargers, Chevrolets, 1976 Mercury Cougers, and the 1978 Ford Thunderbird campaigned by Bud Moore's #15 team. Cale Yarborough won the Western 500 in an Olds and said, "The Olds is quite a racecar."

The Cutlass sported a distinctive twin-nostril grille on a sloped, slightly rounded nose, making it the sleekest car on the speedway. The Regal and Lesabre meanwhile sported a sloped grille not unlike that of the Laguna S3, but with flusher headlight covers. The Ford Thunderbird was similar in styling to its Mercury cousin but much bulkier.

For Dodge, however, the only choice available was the 1978 Magnum, featuring a notch-back, sloped headlights, and a large protruding grille. Parts supplies for Dodge teams were drying up by then, and in preseason testing the Dodge's handling sent up a red flag - "The Magnum is undriveable at 190," Richard Petty said in January 1978. Drivers of the Olds Cutlass said the same thing - "I can't drive the Olds, it moves around too much," said Donnie Allison that January. For the Cutlass, a major problem was the open rear quarter windows, which many said packed air inside the sloped rear glass.

For Daytona Speedweeks spoiler sizes were incrementally increased to add some stability, and the racing proved to be competitive. The 125s were won by A.J. Foyt in a Buick and Darrell Waltrip, driving a '76 Monte Carlo because "it's a proven product." The lead bounced around back and forth, sometimes four times in one lap, in the Twins, and Waltrip edged Petty in the final lap of his Twin where the lead changed hands twice - Waltrip after the Twin stated, "Richard Petty has the fastest car here," but in the 500 Petty pulled a three-car draft away from the field only to blow a tire and wreck out at Lap 60. For the 500 Bobby Allison won in Bud Moore's Thunderbird, using a handling edge to pull away from the sleeker Olds Cutlasses.

Complaints about instability caused NASCAR before the Atlanta 500 to add over an inch to the size of rear spoilers, and for the next three seasons the aero wars were a sideshow to the overall on-track competition. The Olds Cutlass won two Daytona 500s, the 1979 Atlanta 500, four of six starts at Talladega, and the 1978 Michigan 400, to go with a plethora of short track wins by Yarborough in 1978. By mid-1979, though, Cale had switched to the Monte Carlo for short tracks and intermediate supers, as the Monte Carlo proved a better handler than the slicker Cutlass - thus were NASCAR teams acquiring an understanding of downforce, though it would be much later that the term, and understanding of it, became a major componant of the garage area.

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It was 1981 that an even more pivotal aerodynamic change was made. NASCAR mandated a complete changeover to 1981 bodystyles with 110-inch wheelbases, a change that turned into a running controversy as almost no bodystyle of the time was stable enough to race - proven in graphic fashion by a series of airborne melees at Daytona in preseason testing and preliminary racing before the 1981 500.

NASCAR increased spoiler sizes to over five inches in height by the start of the 500, which helped keep the cars on the ground. It also cracked down on the one bodystyle suited to racing, the 1981 Pontiac Lemans, a slope-backed racer campaigned by Bobby Allison and Ranier Racing and which dominated Speedweeks before losing the 500 on fuel mileage. By the Atlanta 500 the Lemans was allowed less than three inches of spoiler, and the car was effectively stricken for the season after that. Buick Regals all but monopolized victories, while the tank-like 1981 Ford Thunderbird pulled down seven wins that year, enough to help persuade Ford to reenter the sport for 1982, while Pontiac did the same.

Chevrolet soon followed, and debuted the flush-nosed Monte Carlo at Daytona Speedweeks 1983, a car that quickly replaced the Buick Regal as the common means of competitive transportation. Ford, meanwhile, did even better, debuting the raindrop-shaped Ford Thunderbird. Sporting a very rounded nose and roofline, the style owed more than a little debt to the '81-2 Pontiac Lemans that had caused so much controversy in the 1981 Daytona 500. Fords won four times in 1983 and again in 1984, but it was 1985 when Bill Elliott and Melling Racing exploded into prominence with their Thunderbird, campaigning a car that likely was 7/8ths scale, as the car proved undraftable almost everywhere and racked up 11 superspeedway wins; only a total collapse in the short track portion of the season's final third stopped Bill Elliott from an easy 1985 championship.

But that success detonated a new aero war in 1986. Buick and Oldsmobile stepped up their NASCAR efforts with slope-backed cars, Chevy debuted the Monte Carlo with radical sloped rear glass bolted onto the trunk area, and Pontiac came out with the even meaner-looking Grand Prix 2+2, sporting a flush grille and enormous sloped rear glass. Computer engineering also began entering the sport in a big way, and the long-time practice of "raking" a car's aerodynamics took on greater importance as rooflines and other areas of the cars began to get ground down and slickened more.

This combined with escalating horsepower to increase speeds well past 200 MPH, and a series of airborne melees tore up a lot of cars until Bobby Allison ripped out 100 feet of frontstretch fencing at Talladega in May 1987. NASCAR tried smaller carburators for the two remaining races at Daytona and Talladega that year, only to see Ken Schrader flip into Harry Gant and almost into the fencing in the trioval in the Firecracker and then Brett Bodine get upside down at Talladega in late July.

With the aero wars came a noticable weakening of the draft, which was now affecting ability to pass as the drafting wake off of a car that had been over 300 feet in the early 1980s had by 1987 shrunk to less than 100 feet. NASCAR now mandated restrictor plates for its two largest superspeedways for 1988, and spoiler size began to increase again as GM debuted its GM10 bodied racecars, rounded machines such as the Chevrolet Lumina. By 1993 spoilers had grown to 6.5 inches in height, and at that year's Daytona 500 it helped make drafting more effective, to where the lead changed hands 38 times officially and Dale Jarrett, driving for second-year team owner Joe Gibbs, gunned down the Lumina of Dale Earnhardt in one of the greatest Daytona 500s ever seen. The bigger spoilers also helped improve the draft a tracks like Charlotte, where the World 600 proved to be a spirited race-long battle, and Pocono, where that July the lead changed two to three times a lap on at least five seperate laps.

Speeds, however, were escalating even more, between horsepower, aerodynamics, and the introduction of radial tires during the Goodyear-Hoosier tire war of 1988-9. A series of airborne melees hit the sport in 1993, and when rookie Johnny Benson tumbled down Michigan's backstretch that August, NASCAR tested Ken Schrader's car with a restrictor plate at Charlotte. The plate was 1.25 inches in diameter, larger than that used on the big supers, and did not slow the car used by more than five MPH. Other drivers lobbied against using the plate, recommending instead that spoiler be reduced to five inches in height and the front airdam be raised to five inches off the ground. The reasoning was that the bodystyles were making so much downforce that corner speeds were too high; reducing downforce, so the argument went, would force drivers to lift for the corners and thus slow the cars. This became known as "the 5&5 rule," and in its first race, the National 500 at Charlotte, it failed spectacularly - the cars proved unable to close up on each other and Ernie Irvan, driving Robert Yates' Ford, led almost the entire race, the worst runaway at Charlotte since Leeroy Yarbrough's runaway win in 1966.

The 5&5 rule was quietly dropped after 1993, but in 1998 it came back, and was run for the entirety of the season. In the interregnum, meanwhile, Chevrolet came out with the 1995 Monte Carlo, a rounded, muscular bodystyle deliberately built with downforce as a primary goal. A controversial change to the car's rear deck allowed it to destroy its opposition in 1995 en route to 21 wins, but it also led to a precendent in NASCAR circles - after the Atlanta 500 in 1995 NASCAR confiscated one model of each competing make and tested them in Lockheed's windtunnel, this after Ford lobbied ferociously about the Monte Carlo. "(Billy) France felt like the manufacturers had lied to him," noted Shaun Assael in Wide Open: Days And Nights On The NASCAR Tour, and when they provided aerodynamic numbers he didn't understand, it was the final straw - he now determined that NASCAR would set the aerodynamics of the cars, not the manufacturers.

Windtunnel testing now became a norm of NASCAR and a series of spoiler changes came to equalize the three makes involved in the sport. Ford was eventually allowed to lower the MN12 Thunderbird's roofline and came out in 1996 with a flusher nosepiece, eventually going from eight wins in 1995 to 13 in 1996 and 17 in 1997; in the process they won 1997's manufacturer championship, one of six they'd win over the period of 1992-2002.

Pontiac, meanwhile, came out with a new Grand Prix in 1996, but the car teethed badly in its first year; initially submitted to SABCO Racing in latter 1994, the Grand Prix was to have been built for testing by March 1995, but SABCO refused to build one and eventually Petty Enterprises and Bahari Racing built the prototype, the project losing six months of lead time. The Grand Prix's unique aerodynamic characteristic was its twin-nostril nose and also its rear deck, sloped upward at the taillight areas and downward in the middle, an interesting approach to reducing drag without sacrificing downforce. The Grand Prix needed a new nosepiece by June of 1996, but broke through to win at Phoenix with Bobby Hamilton and the #43, and when GM switched Joe Gibbs' team to Pontiac for 1997 development of the car accelerated; in 1999 JGR and its two-driver tandem of veteran Bobby Labonte and rookie Tony Stewart erupted to eight wins while John Andretti and the Petty #43 rallied to win Martinsville and he and teammate Kyle Petty combined for some 18 top ten finishes. Also making noise that year was Ward Burton and the Bill Davis #22 Pontiac, contending almost everywhere for top tens.

As for the draft, it made a mini-resurgence in the 1995-6 period. "Drivers were telling me, 'Man, I can't believe what the draft's doing now,'" Ernie Irvan said during World 600 weekend in 1995; this was reflected in a hotly contested 600 and also a pair of hotly contested Pocono races in which the lead changed multiple times a lap on several occassions.

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The aero wars took a few new twists in the early portion of the 21st century. The most spectacular twist came when NASCAR tested several cars with a strip across the roof and a wicker on the rear spoiler, designed to add drag and slow the cars down more. This roof spoiler package was tested in the summer of 2000 and debuted at Talladega in October 2000; the Winston 500 turned into the most exciting and celebrated race ever seen as the draft became unstoppable and the lead changed hands 49 times among 21 drivers. This package ran on the plate tracks in 2001 with tentative plans to begin integrating it onto other tracks after that, but the death of Dale Earnhardt and a massive wreck at Talladega in October 2001 set off a surge of driver demands to eliminate the roof spoiler package. NASCAR dropped the roof spoiler after that, though it came back for the Busch Series' plate races in 2004 and again proved supremely effective in improving the competitiveness of the racing.

The longer term twist came in 2003 when NASCAR mandated a basic aerodynamic shape for all makes, a process called aero-matching by NASCAR but more derisively referred to as common templates elsewhere. Following a 2003 season in which Ryan Newman won eight races and did so on several occassions by not pitting under late yellows and stretching his fuel, NASCAR cut spoiler to five inches for 2004 and less than that for 2005, in yet a third edition of the 5&5 rule, this after ferocious lobbying by Ryan Newman's erstwhile teammate Rusty Wallace. NASCAR involvement in the aerodynamics of the racecars then reached an ultimate degree with the design of the so-called "Car Of Tomorrow," a design-by-committee hybrid of a racecar and a racing Truck sporting a grotesque gap in the front airdam, a raised roofline, squared body, and wing on the rear deck.

The COT has tested throughout 2006 and has proven unraceable everywhere it has tested, but NASCAR to date has publically made clear it will campaign the car beginning in 2007. Whether this timetable actually comes to fruition remains to be seen (Robin Pemberton's recent denial of a report that NASCAR would delay introduction of the model comes across as the sanctioning body putting out fires instead of a believable response) as another chapter in NASCAR's aerodynamics history opens.

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.

Car Of Tomorrow Revolt Now Out In The Open

I guess we can say that opposition to the Car Of Tomorrow within NASCAR has come out into the open, especially since NASCAR's own website published a piece detailing how widespread opposition to the concept really is. It's a little bit remarkable that NOL would can the spin on the COT and actually give some honest analysis of the issue. I say a little bit because the COT's failings have become too manifest to deny.

Apparantly the recent Homestead test was something of the final straw as far as glossing over the COT's failure on the racetrack. Once again the Car Of Tomorrow refused to drive well, refused to show much ability to pass, and it pushed in dirty air worse than present-generation cars. So the question thus becomes - with the car's universal record of failure in testing, can NASCAR continue this farce?

NASCAR has been pretty pigheaded on the COT - John Darby's comments in particular are pigheaded - shown by the fact it has allowed testing to continue as it has and is sticking with its schedule of phasing in the COT over the next three seasons. Somehow, though, I'm at a loss to believe that NASCAR really will go through with what is so clearly a bad idea - phasing in a racecar design that is fundamentally unsound.

Comparison with 1981's forced introduction of shorter-wheelbase cars has some validity in that those cars proved more dangerous than the late-70s models the teams had been running. The key difference then is that it wasn't economically feasible to hold onto the late-70s models. Such is not the case with the Car Of Tomorrow - there is no economic reason to convert to this model, never mind having any other kind of reason to race it.

There simply is no valid reason for the Car Of Tomorrow, and why NASCAR remains in denial about it continues to frustrate people involved in the sport.

Michigan COT Test A Failure

Stop me if you've read this before about the Car Of Tomorrow.

"The COT is a piece of crap," notes one unnamed team owner. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson both stated what has been obvious from the very beginning - the COT is junk in dirty air, and the rear wing has made the aeropush worse, not better - this on top of the gapped airdam that contributes to greater aeropush.

So the frustrating question remains - why is NASCAR so intent on pushing this project onto the sport? John Darby's words come across as the words of a sanctioning body in denial.