In NASCAR, the future is now

Jeff Burton put it simplest here Wednesday during NASCAR’s biggest, most intense test session in years: “The Car of Tomorrow is today.”

With the actual racing debut of the long-controversial C.O.T. just over three weeks away, in the March 25 Food City 500 here, all major Nextel Cup teams got very serious about the radical new design.

A total of 67 cars were tested in a 12-hour marathon at half-mile Bristol Motor Speedway, with more testing scheduled for today.

Driver reviews were mixed, but most felt the C.O.T. isn’t so bad after all.

“I’m pleasantly surprised, really,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Said Burton: “My car doesn’t drive like a spaceship; it drives like a race car. Once you get in the car, it’s just a car. It’s just a matter of getting the car to do what you want it to do.”

C.O.T. track testing has been ongoing for two years, but this round is the most profound to teams, as their last shot before the actual racing debut.

The C.O.T. design is aimed primarily at safety, with more room for the driver in the cockpit, movement of the seat four inches toward the center, and high-tech crushable materials inside the door panels -- all steps against the last remaining frontier of NASCAR safety, side impact.

Since the death of racing icon Dale Earnhardt in the 2001 Daytona 500, accelerated safety research has led to mandatory head and neck restraints, energy-dissipating “soft walls” and cocoon-like, survival-cell seats. Those innovations have left the “T-bone” side-impact crash as the biggest worry, and the C.O.T. addresses that.

Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart had vocally led resistance among drivers last year, calling the C.O.T. “the flying brick.” After the morning session Wednesday, Stewart said, “It feels just like any other race car; it’s just a matter of finding the balance.”

But by dusk, four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, a five-time winner here, called it “a frustrating day for me. I love this racetrack. We used to come here and work through whatever challenges we had. We haven’t been able to do that.”

Taller and wider than current Cup cars, with adjustable aerodynamic wings fore and aft, the C.O.T. has forced teams virtually to throw out years of data on chassis and aerodynamics. That’s what they didn’t like.

“I think the reason for that is that we’ve already spent four years being salesmen for this car,” said John Darby, NASCAR’s Nextel Cup director. “The car is done....It’s here on the racetrack, it’s going around in circles, the sky hasn’t fallen.”

Beginning at Bristol, 14 races this season will require the C.O.T. at all ovals less than 1.5 miles in circumference, and at the tour’s two road courses. Full use at all tracks is not scheduled until 2009.

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Ed Hinton covers motor racing for Tribune newspapers.