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NASCAR says maybe the Car of Tomorrow will be the Full-Time Car of the 2008 season. This AP story has a lot of details. Dustin Long touched on that in the story he wrote for today's paper. (Be patient - our site is as slow as James Hylton at Daytona and Dale Jarrett most anywhere.)

Dustin also has a full report from the night session and the abbreviated Day 2 session on his blog.

And the Big Dog quotes Jeff Burton thusly: "My car doesn't drive like a spaceship." Bram weighs in here: "It still has a way to go to be completely accepted, but it will be... there's not much choice."

Which brings me back to the beginning. Remember the COT was supposed to be phased in over three years -- 16 races in 2007, 10 more in 2008 (including both Daytonas) and 10 more in 2009. (Jayski has the list.) If they're going to bring the COT to most of the intermediate tracks next year, why not just do all of them? The phase-in never made much sense. Might as well have everyone working on one set of cars instead of two. I think that's where NASCAR's head is on that, anyway.

Convince me otherwise in the comments.

That's one man's view of the move that helped Juan Pablo Montoya win today's race in Mexico City.

Scott Pruett can complain all he wants. Problem is, no one's going to listen.

Don't get me wrong: Pruett's got a ton of talent. Put him behind the wheel of a sports car, and he'll drive the wheels off of it. Put him in the left-turn only lane, eh, not so hot. (His 2000 season for Cal Wells was an exercise in how not to drive stock cars.)

In NASCAR, Pruett's a hired gun, a road-course ringer, someone who in the pecking order ranks waaaaay below Junior and Gordon, below Scott Riggs and Jeff Green and Dave Blaney -- and just above the field fillers.

In other words, if Montoya had to run over anyone in the field with eight laps left, he couldn't have picked a better target than Scott Pruett.

Like I said, that's one man's opinion that Montoya ran Pruett off the road. The video shows that Pruett blocked late and that Montoya held his line.

True, Montoya wasn't exactly backing off from his teammate for the weekend. Would you? Let me hear from you in the comments.

The weather's getting warm, there's plenty to do, it's college basketball season ...

Wait, wait. I'm forgetting something. Think, John, think ...

Uh ...

Ummm ...

Got it! Racin'. I'm apparently not the only one, according to Dustin Long's story in today's paper:

This year’s Daytona 500 featured its smallest TV audience in three years, and the race’s ratings dropped more than 10 percent from 2004 in many major cities, including several in the Southeast.

The news isn't all bad. NASCAR isn't growing like the NFL -- nothing is, not even my respect for Denny Hamlin's mad driving skillz -- but racing's decline isn't nearly as steep as, oh, every other televised sport.

It's an interesting read, so ponder the reasons for the decline while you're watching (or not) the Vegas race on Sunday. The charts that didn't make the online version (or the print version - I had to edit them down a bit) are after the jump.

No, you can't blame all of it on the fact that NASCAR insists on racing twice a year at Fon-tucky. I think there's plenty of blame to go around.

Yes, I know I get a lot of it. It's apparently an occupational hazard of blogging. It's getting worse, too.

If you see comments written in gibberish -- and you have to dig pretty far back in the comments (or go here) -- just ignore it. I kick the spam to the curb every morning.

If you see something more profane (and I don't mean "Junior Sux! LOOSER!"), let me know by e-mail and I'll try to clean it asap.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So Kyle Busch slides backwards across the finish line for second in Saturday's Busch race, then Jimmie Johnson comes from 60th or so to blow away the field in Sunday's race.

A question, then: Was this weekend's racing at the new and maybe-or-maybe-not improved Las Vegas Motor Speedway ....

(a) The greatest ever -- why didn't they work on it sooner?
(b) Gah! If I wanted to watch colorful things things slide around, I would have pulled out my tapes of Olympic ice dancing.
(c) They raced Sunday?

Holler back in comments.

Update: Dustin took a pace-car lap around the Vegas track before Sunday's race. Those bumps you heard about? I'm surprised someone didn't demand that the drivers race SUVs.

It's not Hot-lanta, at least not today. But the front seems to be moving through, and it looks like there might be Cup qualifying and a Truck race tonight after all.

My mind isn't much on the Atlanta race - it's officially spring here, and there's a ton of stuff I'm trying to get done outside. 2 p.m. Sunday, yeah, I'll probably catch the start of the race, then head back outside to finish whatever I started in the morning. Make sure to check in with Dustin Long's blog. He'll be at Atlanta all weekend.

My head's wrapped around the COT. It makes its debut at Bristol next Sunday, and I spent a chunk of yesterday working on a graphic to try to explain the key parts. (No, I didn't know the teams could move the splitter fore and aft. The things you learn in this job.)

That's my feeble attempt at a Friday post. What sort of racin' things are on your mind?

... or was Sunday's race a snoozer?

Dustin's story hit all of the big developments: Johnson vs. Stewart, Montoya vs. Gordon, Mark Martin vs. retirement.

I'm a little surprised. I expected Atlanta to be a little wilder. Maybe it's the fuel cells? I wonder how many popped tires we would have seen if the drivers were hauling an extra four gallons (9-11 laps worth) of fuel.

Brian France went on the radio with the Big Dog today. He hits all the topics you'd figure he'd hit - Car of Tomorrow, TV ratings, debris cautions ("we have to err on the side of caution, no pun intended"), sponsor conflicts, etc.

The one thing in there that wasn't completely obvious or predictable came at the end, when France was talking about the future of the Busch-for-now-but-Your-Name-Could-Be-Here Series: As we debate this internally all the time somebody’s quick to tell me it’s the #2 motorsport in the country.

Which I guess it might be. I suspect Busch might outdraw IRL in fan interest and TV ratings. (I probably should check, but I'm on deadline.) Champ Car and F1 aren't really on the radar. World Rally would be if it had a U.S. TV deal, but it doesn't.

So is Busch really the nation's No. 2 motorsport? Or am I falling for the NASCAR spin?

The transcript is here.

In about 72 hours from now, the green flag will fly on the Cup race at Bristol, and for the first time in 75 years Mark Martin won't be racing.

OK, 19 years. Martin's 621-race streak dates back to the 1988 Daytona 500, the one where Bobby and Davey Allison finished 1-2. Martin, meanwhile, started 38th, overheated after 19 laps and parked it. (True fact: The 1988 Daytona 500 was the first time Martin climbed behind the wheel of the No. 6 car for Jack Roush. I'd say that worked out pretty well for both of them.)

On one hand, Martin's making the right call to take off this week (and next). He said he was going to drive a partial schedule this year, and Ginn Racing wants to get David Ragan Smith behind the wheel sooner than later.

On the other, what is he smoking? Martin's leading the points! He's driving great! The No. 01 car hasn't been this fast in years! He could make the Chase! And win the ...

Let's not get carried away. This is Mr. Second Place we're talking about.

Still: What would you do if you were Mark Martin? Is he making the right call? Or does he know something about the Car of Tomorrow that everyone else racing Sunday doesn't?

So Jeff Gordon took the pole, last year's winner Kurt Busch will start 42nd and the first car Gordon will probably catch is that of A.J. Allmendinger, who rode the outside wall to his first Cup start of the season. (AJA goes off 43rd.)

Here's your starting grid. No, I can't explain why Regan "I'm Just Borrowing Mark Martin's Car" Smith will start 26 spots ahead of Matt Kenseth.

Yes, the drivers are complaining. Just think if someone replaced your desk and desk chair with a card table and a folding chair. You'd complain, too.

If you want some more details about what the COT is all about, USA Today put together a nice flash graphics package.

Meanwhile, Ft. Worth racin' 'riter John Sturbin is aghast that NASCAR has rules. You know, like other sports. (P.S.: There's no such language as "American," despite what the textbooks say in Texas.)

The car looked different, but it was the same old Bristol: a one-groove track with not a lot of passing except when someone got outside and everyone freight-trained him down low.

A couple of NASCAR noobs, Juan Pablo Montoya and A.J. Allmendinger, kept running into things. Two of the Gibbs cars (Stewart and Hamlin) had fuel pump problems. The only guy to get his firesuit in a knot was Dale Jarrett, who was understandably hacked off at a panicky Matt Kenseth.

But all in all, it was a race. Dustin's story in today's paper focused on the driver reaction, which was generally negative. (I figured that would be the case - everyone hates new stuff. I figured the race winner would love the car. I was wrong there.)

My favorite comment came from Junior:

Dale Earnhardt Jr. credited the car with preserving his seventh-place finish. Earnhardt said that when Denny Hamlin's car slowed in the final laps because of a fuel pump problem, it clumped cars together behind. Earnhardt said he bounced off a few cars.

"It was really funny, I thought if you hit a guy you'd spin him like normal," Earnhardt said. "When you hit them it just propels them forward. It's kind of cool. I would have gotten spun out in the other car."

So what did you think of the COT? Better? Worse? No different? I'm leaning toward "not much different," but I haven't decided if the "not much" part is better or worse than the old cars.

Man, I'd forgotten all about David Ragan's one-man wrecking crew performance last fall at Martinsville. Scene Daily didn't -- its story is here.

The Scene Daily piece, however, casts Ragan 2.0 as a wiser, better version of the guy who ran Ken Schrader into the Turn 1 fence.

Has he improved? The best racing site on the Internet has Ragan's 2007 numbers. Except for a fifth-place finish at Daytona, Ragan has pretty much done little with the No. 6 car except keep it running. He doesn't have a DNF yet this season, but he has qualified poorly (no better than 35th) and he has finished a lap or more down in each of the past three races. At Bristol, he embarrassed the No. 6 team. Roush Fenway Racing spins his three spins here. It's not pretty.

Remember that Martinsville is a COT race, which means Ragan's car is four inches than last year's version -- and so is everyone else's. The Martinsville track, meanwhile, didn't get any wider in the offseason. Throw Juan Pablo Montoya in the mix as well as a few drivers (Burton the elder, Blaney, Vickers, Jarrett) trying to get in the Top 35 Club ...

... I predict carnage. It might not start with Ragan, but I expect to see a lot of the 6 car on Sunday.

Because the walls are a lot farther from the track in F1.

I could have also titled this post, Don't lend your $1.5 million Ferrari to a rank amateur.

No, not even Jason Leffler could have driven this poorly.

Oh, yeah: video. (The first one focuses more on the aftermath. This one shows the lockup and the actual impact.)

I about cried.

Dustin Long caught up with the NASCAR legend over the weekend. His Q&A is here.

I liked his defense of points racing:

Q: Is there too much emphasis on the championship in NASCAR now?

JOHNSON: No because it pays so dad-blame much money, you're foolish not to try (for it).

In his next breath Johnson says winning races is paramount:

We went after them but we didn't go after them and give up winning races. If I caught a guy trying to win a championship on the race track, his (butt) is in trouble. I went to win every race.

It's cool to win races. But it's hard to be getting a $6 million check in November.

Earlier this month, I posted an apology of sorts for the comment spam that started appearing in the blog like so many pieces of race cars that cause all of these debris cautions. Unlike those quote-unquote chunks of rubber, brake pads, springs, etc., the stuff cluttering up this blog is real.

I want to apologize again: It seems that our new and improved Movable Type platform did away with the numerical doorkeeper system - you know, the box in which you have to type five numbers before you can post. It's gone now, like Pontiac and the Plymouth Superbird. Which means any spambot written by someone with an IQ north of a scuffed tire will successfully be able to post.

The problem: I still have to read the spam and make sure it's not something that trickled over from here.

P.S. What's Kyle Busch supposed to do, lie? I'd rather have Kyle Busch say the COT sucks than Jimmie Johnson say he's confident NASCAR will continue to work to improve ... zzzzz

Monday update: The Boss has the right idea. Because I got 16 of those little pain in the butts, I'm going to shut off comments to the older posts as I get spam.

I can't stop thinking about how the Car of Tomorrow tried to kill Brian Vickers last weekend at Bristol.

One of the little things that jumped out at me last week when I was putting together the COT graphic for the paper was the note about NASCAR rerouting the exhaust pipe to the right side of the car, away from the driver. Makes sense - those cars are hot enough as it is without a 1,000-degree-plus pipe running under the driver's seat.

But then the exhaust pipe in Vickers' car broke, burning his feet and nearly asphyxiating him. I'm tempted to laugh -- what else could go wrong for Toyota this year? But I'm also tempted to call the cops and swear out a warrant against the COT for attempted homicide.

Remember this while you're watching the race: The Car of Tomorrow is a killer.

Speaking of the COT, Dustin Long is at Martinsville all weekend and will be filing regular updates.