Today is the day. It felt like tomorrow would never come. At 3:30 pm EDT, the Car of Right Now becomes the Car of Yesterday, today. The Car of Tomorrow, which is actually the Car of Later Today, finally gets to be The Car, period. For two weeks anyway.
If this is confusing you, as it has me, just wait until the 2007 Food City 500 makes it's debut on ESPN Classic. Talk about time warps.
I read and hear much speculation about the likelyhood of teams getting nabbed cheating with the new car. This surprises me. One of the goals of NASCAR with this new spec car, was to make it more difficult for innovators to gain advantage by skirting template standards and the like. The skeptics are unswayed. I hope Michael Waltrip is watching his guys more closely this week.
The other buzz I hear, and this has been a subject tied more to the general economics of the auto manufacturers and NASCAR's flattening TV ratings than to the CoT, is that at least one of the Big Three is going to scale back it's NASCAR commitment when it's current contracts expire.
I still doubt this but, if the current blandifcation of the Car that we Race helps cause such an outcome, it will be the single most negative aspect of the new racer.
Other than that, it's a race car. And it's not exactly replacing a beauty queen, ya know?
Long live different ugly.
If I had my way the COT (OGS) would find it's way onto the ESPN Classic program schedule no later than noon on Monday March 26, 2007.
Remember, I'm the guy who continues to have the wacky idea to go back to actual showroom configurations and let the auto designers make or break their respective race cars. The Liberals would probably call me a racist for that type of thinking.
The apologists want an even playing field. Wha! Wha! Wha! What would Oprah do? Before you know it, NASCAR will stop tracking laps and have a drawing at the end of each race to pick a winner...just to make it fair. Oh, and the same driver could only win the drawing once a season so as not to make anyone else feel bad. That way the top 35 in owners points could be a winner once and leave one final race drawing to pick the champion. Of course, that would make it painfully evident that Juan P. Montoya could actually have a chance to win the championship his rookie year. Imagine, if you will, the "babbling on" at an increasingly fevered pitch by rabid racing media types if that were to occur.
Between the Car O Tomorrow, the sanitizing of the races and of course the death of my hero...I don't much give a flying crap what NASCAR does. But the fact remains, the COT is butt ugly and no amount of decals will alter that. It resembles something from the old Soviet Union and in my opinion is yet another huge mistake brought to us courtesy of NASCAR.
This will, no doubt, be the ONLY time Tony Stewart and I will EVER agree on anything but we're spot on together with this one.
Race In Peace, Dale Earnhardt! MIB
Posted by: Man In Black | March 23, 2007 at 02:49 PM
This is quite an admition coming from you. I thought #20 was a THUG. If true, would this make you a thuggee, thugger,thuggista, fellow thug? As for Juan Pablo... I am already foaming at the mouth. And to quote #3.."I'm, real sorry 'bout Terry. Ah did't mean ta wreck 'im."
Posted by: charlie | March 23, 2007 at 04:10 PM