CoT not living up to billing

It’s the wrong car at the wrong time, but for the right reasons. That’s one judgment about NASCAR’s car of tomorrow, which in the past few weeks has done the unbelievable: it ruined the show at Bristol and then ruined the show at Talladega, two tracks on tour that always put on great shows.

But not with the car of tomorrow, not this time.

The new model racer, with its admirably bigger greenhouse roll cage (needed for years) and a number of excellent other safety aspects, seems to be going nowhere fast.

Humpy Wheeler, the promoter premier of Lowe’s Motor Speedway, has been a strong proponent of the new NASCAR stock car. But Wheeler and Bruton Smith, and these drivers, are now looking nervously ahead at a major car-of-tomorrow test at Atlanta Motor Speedway in two weeks, a test that is key to NASCAR’s planned introduction of the model next season on the Nextel Cup’s intermediate tracks.

“The car of tomorrow needs work," Wheeler said bluntly. “I’ve been one of its boosters, but it’s definitely having birthing problems."

However, NASCAR officials so far have been bullheaded about it, perhaps past the point of commonsense.

Some fans may be voting with their feet and TV remotes: Final ratings for last week’s UAW-Ford 500 on ABC were 4.6, down from last year’s 4.8 on NBC. That downward trend in viewers should be worrisome. More at Winston Salem Journal