By: Rob D'Amico and Michele Rahal from Race Day on Fox Sports Radio

Michele Rahal's Side

The first round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship at Louden, New Hampshire is one in the books and a dark-horse takes the win, if you can call Greg Biffle a dark-horse. That’s what the Chase is supposed be and Sunday’s Sylvania 300 race didn’t disappoint, at least as it shook up the points. On the other hand, it was still a race where cars couldn’t turn, splitters hit the ground rendering the cars uncontrollable and passing was still a restart process rather than battling side by side on track racing. The common catchphrase by all the commentators has now become ‘track position’.

Aerodynamics are paramount on tracks like Lowes, Texas and Atlanta but the negative effects of it should not be as severe as it is on one mile tracks, no matter what the configuration. The mechanical grip should be the dominant force that controls whether a car can turn and actually pass in the corners.  If you have grip coming off the corner then you have speed at the end of the straight, hence an ability to pass. This is still not happening and the New Hampshire race was more of the same.

Greg Biffle drove his heart out and beat an oncoming train across the tracks, the said train being Jimmie Johnson. It’s obvious that everyone has the same chassis to work with but those teams that have more money can make them work. Add to that the disparity that exists in horsepower from manufacturer to manufacturer and further exacerbate it with the ‘have and have nots’ and you end up with races that have not lived up to the hype.

It was great to see Greg Biffle win. It was sad to see a small bolt destroy Kyle Busch’s day. It was dramatic entertainment with dialogue between Dale Earnhardt, Jr and Rick Hendrick. Having stated this one would think that everything NASCAR wants to see happen to make a great race, but everything else in between was a continuation of the problems that have painfully existed the day the first COT hit the track.

It’s time to stop blaming Goodyear for its tires, after all, you can dress up a horse with new shoes, but it doesn’t make it run any faster.


Rob's Side

First it’s not the Car of Tomorrow. It’s here already and it’s called the “New Car”. Are there problems? Yes. Can they be fixed? Yes and they will over time, real competition time, not in Formula One simulators. The car hasn’t raced a full season to date and it has shown marked improvements.

The teams are finally beginning to find the correct direction for this car. Bob Osbourne, Carl Edwards crew chief, couldn’t get their car to handle this past weekend at New Hampshire. Things looked dismal. What did he do? He immediately went back to the hotel to pour over his notes and ultimately changed virtually everything. Bob shows up on Sunday morning and told Carl “we changed virtually everything on the car” and it’s going to work! The net result is that Carl, without even turning a lap to test it out, jumps in and takes the green then shoots out to an early lead ultimately finishing third.

Whining about the new car is like whining that the Chase is all wrong because a driver like Kyle Busch goes into the Chase dominating and comes out of the first round in 8th place. Whether or not that is fair is debatable, but the bottom line is that ‘it is what it is’. Work with it.
 
It’s disappointing that a $25 part takes Kyle Busch from the top spot but that same part could have failed on Reed Sorenson’s car as well. The positive in all this is that the chase is not like the NFL’s playoff system where a team is knocked out every week. Kyle Busch can come back next week and show us what he can do best when the car will let him.

This car was designed by NASCAR’s Research and Development Center for safety. The fact that it has taken the teams time to sort out the handling is irrelevant. They are all playing with the same rules, the same chassis and ultimately the racing will be better off for it.

My point here is to forget all the stuff you hear people saying about the “New Car” and look at the real stories in this sport. The teams will get this car right, Goodyear will catch up and the racing will speak for itself.

Has anyone given serious thought to the possibility that it may not be the cars handling at all, but the commitment of the manufacturers to deliver a competitive power-plant?