Scared you, didn’t I? Yeah, that Car of Tomorrow is pretty scary looking, anyway. And the reviews on how it drives have been mixed; perhaps that’s just drivers being miffed at stepping out of their comfort zone.
If it’s supposed to improve driver safety, then I’m all for it. And everyone seems to believe that it will.
But what will it do to the racing? Clearly, that shouldn’t be the number-one factor — safety should be — but it certainly should be in the low single digits.
No one knows. And that’s what is most troublesome.
Let’s leave the safety issue out of this for a moment, because I think we’ll all agree that is the paramount issue.
It’s troublesome because NASCAR, week in and week out, has a pretty good product. There are some races that just stink (Bristol in late August), but there are generally more good races than bad.
Now, suddenly, the sanctioning body wants to radically change the most fundamental aspect to the sport: the cars. There have been tests and tests and more tests.
But we won’t know how it races until there are 43 cars on the track, something no test can replicate. We won’t know until there are 43 cars on the track at a short track, a mid-length and a superspeedway.
NASCAR’s product is pretty good. Why, again putting safety aside for just a moment, would it want to risk that?
If you’ll recall, this change has not been welcomed by team owners, who have to shell out millions of dollars to replace a fleet of racecars that will be obsolete in a few months.
Owners did everything they could to get NASCAR to reconsider. It didn’t.
In some ways, it seems like NASCAR just wanted to reassert its authority: This is what we’re going to do and if you want to race with us, you’ll follow along nicely.
If we bring safety back into it, are the cars now being used unsafe? Thankfully, there haven’t been many major injuries recently (cross your fingers) despite some scary looking crashes — Mark Martin at Lowe’s, Jeff Gordon at Pocono.
Obviously, we can’t have enough safety in what is, no matter how you slice it, a very dangerous sport.
But are the additional safety benefits worth the risk of the ruining the good thing NASCAR has going? If there is a great increase in safety, it’s a no-brainer. If it’s only a marginal increase in safety, is it still worth it?
That’s a tough question. Quality of racing, on some level, must be considered, but at what cost?
I’m not sure I have a good answer for that, and that’s what’s most frustrating. The folks in charge at NASCAR can make a pretty good guess at how much safety will improve, but one can never really know. Much the same, we can make less-educated guesses about the quality of racing, but won’t know for sure until the COT makes its debut.
The COT could be the next big thing, or it could be the New Coke.
If the experiment fails, do you think owners will enjoy being told to scrap their fleet a second time?