NASCAR officials have talked for years about its so-called car of tomorrow, one designed to improve safety, contain rising costs and improve competition. The optimism has not always been shared in the NASCAR garage, however, where many race-team owners have prayed that tomorrow would never come.
No such luck. NASCAR announced in January that the car of tomorrow would be used in Nextel Cup competition beginning in the spring of 2007 at Bristol Motor Speedway, and phased in over three years. It will be in 16 of 36 races next year. Brian France, the chairman and chief executive of NASCAR, led the pitch for the concept, which became a priority after the racetrack deaths of Dale Earnhardt and others.
The announcement was met with more than a little skepticism.
"At the end of the day, those guys in the shop are going to make this car go just as fast in a couple years as it's going today," said Felix Sabates, a co-owner of Chip Ganassi Racing.
"We're just going through this exercise that the car of tomorrow is making everything that we own today the car of yesterday," he added. "NASCAR has to do what it thinks is right. I just don't agree with it."
Sabates said he agreed with making racecars safer. The car of tomorrow accomplishes that in many ways, including having a frame designed to diminish the severity of impact, crushable material in its body and bumpers, and a driver's seat repositioned four inches farther away from the window. The gas tanks are smaller and less vulnerable to damage during crashes.
But the team owner Rick Hendrick said, "I think we could have used the car we had and made it safer."
The new car will be two inches taller and four inches wider. It is hoped that the design, which gives more space to the driver, will improve the quality of races by removing some of the dependence on aerodynamics that has taken some of the competition out of the drivers' hands and turned stock-car racing into more of a sport of engineers.
The new racecar will eliminate the designs of individual manufacturers from Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge and, next year's addition, Toyota. All cars will be virtually identical except for the fake grill that differentiates the models.
NASCAR officials say the car will control costs because there will be no need to build as many racecars to fit different tracks on the circuit. Some teams have as many as 17 racecars for use at various tracks; they will need perhaps only 10 in the future because there will be so few adjustments allowed from car to car, according to Gary Nelson, who recently resigned as NASCAR's vice president for research and development but will remain involved with the development of the car.
But Sabates said: "I don't know how they're going to save us money. We've got 60 some cars that are going to be obsolete. You figure the average cost of the car is US$75,000. That's US$5 million they're going to throw away. It takes a long time for us to make US$5 million on one of these deals."
NASCAR figures that by phasing in the changes over three years, the current equipment will not become immediately obsolete. Teams can use up their inventory along the way.
But the team owner Chip Ganassi pointed to another hidden expense: "We're going to have dual development programs going on where we're going to be developing the car of tomorrow, and our current car."
Another concern in the NASCAR garages is what if the car of tomorrow doesn't work.
The driver Jeff Burton, who tested the car recently, said: "My biggest concern with it is, obviously, what kind of racing are you putting on. You've got to have better racing. You got to have cars that we can do what we need to do with them. If we don't, the fans won't be there."
NASCAR officials say they are still experimenting and that researchers are years away from finding the right specifications for the midsize ovals.
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