News-Record.com

Gary Nelson, NASCAR VP of competition: "We’re working on a very nice package that works on the race track in traffic and the leader and the overtaking cars are able to have the right amount of balance as they run in clean and dirty air.
"The next phase of the car of tomorrow is developing it in traffic. What we designed this car to do was not to be thrown out and replaced all the time. We’ve designed this car to run for a long time. Road courses. Short tracks. Intermediate size tracks. All the way to Daytona, you’d be able to run the same foundation of car, the frame, the case, the body and all the components that today are being swapped around for certain types of tracks. We’re eliminating that with this car. So, in doing that, you have to find a balance of things that bolt on, the spoiler, the wing, the front splitter, those kinds of things because we're eliminating the opportunity of taking the hood and moving it over a half inch or taking your decklid and raising it or lowering it or twisting it for one track but not another track. That's all going away with this car. The purpose of that is on the car owner side of it, the expense. If you have one size fits all, when you talk about the frame of the car and the body of the car, how do you make that car run well at the tracks. Well, you bolt on aerodynamic devices such as the spoiler, the wing or the splitter."

Nelson on the testing schedule: "We’re going to continue working through '06. As we’ve said all along we’ll be on track in '07. We'll give you that exact races in the near future."

Brett Bodine, NASCAR's test driver: "Today the car we've been able to tune it with bolt-on pieces. Not cut fenders off, not cut quarterpanels off to change the balance of the car. That's one of our goals. We want a car that is very adjustable so maybe the car can be very adoptable to several race tracks instead of track specific."

Bodine on the wing: "The wing is very adjustable. You can change its angle. You can change the shape of the wing. We're still in development. The wing on the car is strictly a prototype piece. No means is that final. Certainly the concept is starting to prove itself worthy of continued investigation."

So what does this all mean?

Who knows? It suggests NASCAR is thinking of something more dramatic for its showcase tracks than shrinking the gas tank or adding a couple of roof strips.

Credits: The quotes are from Dustin Long, live at Daytona. The photo is from NASCAR.

4 p.m. update: The Winston-Salem Journal reported today that the COT project is dead. No sources to the blurb (second item), and Mike Mulhern is the industry's favorite trial balloon holder.

Full Throttle has more: "Without support from the auto makers the CoF is nothing but a Brian France pipe dream, there is no other way to put it."