It's Official : NASCAR Will Run COT Full Time Staring 2008

Well, it is official. NASCAR's sanctioning body has decided to run the COT full-time in starting in 2008. In 2006 NASCAR said that it was going to be a three year phase in with 16 races in 2007, 26 races in 2008 and then a full 36 races in 2009. But they also said that if team owners wanted to go full time with faster, then they would.

The average margin of victory through the first five Car of Tomorrow races has been .505 seconds (compared to 1.286 seconds at these same races a year ago) and there have been six fewer DNFs through this same race sequence from 2006.

Some drivers are ready to go with it full time and other are not. There are complaints about it's handling. Jeff Gordon made the comment that he does not understand how they can go forward with this decision when the car has not been raced on a 1.5 mile track yet.

"We feel like making this decision now gives teams an idea of what is coming and lets them put more resources into the new car," Pemberton(NASCAR's VP of Competition said. "Teams can work on program for next year and everyone will be able to get a better grasp on the entire project."

The COT is the culmination of a seven-year project undertaken at NASCAR's Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. The new car was built primarily with safety in mind, but during the development process, NASCAR also discovered ways in which the car could improve competition and enable teams to be more cost-efficient.

The car of tomorrow is designed to be a safer car as well as being less costly to run because it could be used at a variety of tracks.
According to NASCAR, 13 teams have used the same chassis for three of the five races; four teams have run the same chassis in four of the five races; and one team - the No. 29 Richard Childress Racing team - has run the same chassis in all five car of tomorrow races.