Meet NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow

For most longtime race fans it seems as if NASCAR has changed dramatically over recent years. And in fact, it has. Over the last few years NASCAR changed its sponsorship from the tobacco giant Winston to its current sponsor, the leader in cell phone technology, Nextel. Not only has sponsorship changed, but the overall class of drivers has shifted dramatically. The good ole' southern boy mold has been broken and the demographic has now branched out to include drivers from all states, and they've went out of their way to bring in more ethnicity to NASCAR including a recent race by a driver originally from Colombia. Tracks such as Rockingham, a staple track in North Carolina in recent past, have been shut down and have made way for bigger, more marketable tracks such as Texas Motor Speedway. It's clear that NASCAR is headed in a different direction, and they're next new project is introducing NASCAR'S Car of Tomorrow for 2007.

Don't let the futuristic title fool you. The Car of Tomorrow is much closer to today than tomorrow and has been scheduled to make an appearance in the 2007 season. Nascar informed the Cup teams that the spring race at Bristol in 2007 will be the first of sixteen events the designed car will run. That number graduates to twenty six events in 2008 and NASCAR plans to run every race is 2009 with the COT. However, if all goes well there is a possibility that the car will run every event in 2008.

Why make the change, you may ask? Just like requiring safe wall barriers be installed at all tracks, this change is aimed at making the cars safer. Many teams aren't pleased with this, being the expense of reworking their cars and shops to meet the COT specifications will be very high. In fact, only Kyle Petty and Brett Bodine are taking an active approach to helping NASCAR test the car at such tracks as Daytona.

Here are the following tracks the COT will run in 2007: Bristol, Phoenix, Richmond, Martinsville, Dover, New Hampshire, Darlington, Talladega (This one should be interesting) and the road-course tracks at Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen. The other tracks will be added in 2008.

If you're not a big fan of change, then this next part shouldn't please you too much. As the fan base of NASCAR changes so does the car. The physical make up of the COT has dramatically improved. For instance, the COT is four inches wider and two inches taller than the current cars you see on the track. The roll cage has shifted three inches to the rear and the driver's seat will be four inches to the center of the car, another safety feature giving the drivers more protection on side impact collisions. One feature the drivers will like is that the exhaust system is designed to run through the body and diverting away, not to the driver.

I'm sure you're curious about how the car will handle. Not only is NASCAR making an attempt to improve safety specifications but they're hoping for more side by side racing. How the car handles to down force was a big reason they started the design of the COT. For instance, they've gotten rid of the aero push by making the windshield slightly more upright which will slow the cars and allow for more competitive racing.

A few other noticeable physical changes include tighter parameters and the headlights are straighter to match the production vehicle. This will too slow the car and make it less aerodynamic. I'm sure you're seeing a pattern by now. The idea here is less speed, more competition. Fans don't pay to see 193 MPH racing. They come to see wrecks, cars ramming into the back of other's bumpers, and feuds igniting between fellow drivers. And the COT will do just that.

Another example of how NASCAR has designed the car to be more mainstream is by adding enhanced TV camera locations throughout the car. The camera pod will be mounted on all cars instead of just a few of the more popular drivers, and along with the roof camera the cars will have side-mounted cameras and possibly the low front.

Regardless of how the COT will perform the fans will still watch with eager anticipation. In my personal opinion, NASCAR needs to realize that no matter what technology they put onto the track they still need to cater to their fans. The fans in the South fuel the sport and have been the foundation for which NASCAR has built their multi-billion dollar business. And now this is just one more step in taking the days of running moonshine between states to a mainstream platform. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, I always say.