Once there was a great group of guys who liked to get together and race their cars. One day one of them said that they should all have a number on the door of their cars, Aha, a rule was made. After a time a man named France came along, and alas, Nascar was born...Well Mr F knew that this racing thing needed some leadership, so he got some family members to help. Boy did those family members get rich, and rules, man they made rules like no one had ever seen. They couldn't wait for the season to be over to make more rules. Sometimes they made rules that they couldn't even understand, let alone a mental giant like Junior Johnson. Knowing that they needed help they hired even more people to help them make rules. When they finally made enough rules that most of the teams couldn't understand, or deciepher them they came up with a solution. Why not just dictate who, what, where, when, how, how not, why, whynot, to all the teams, and sell them the parts..POOF, The COT was born.. Following the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby Program they started giving all the teams the exact same car, and let them paint it anyway they wanted,as long as they didn't violate one of the 253 Paint Rules.  When someone figured out a way to make the new car better, whoops, new rule, sorry...So here we sit now, the COT is the COT,tomorrow became today. Sure the racing has been close, and the cars tough, but the engineering, the inventiveness, the tweaking has taken a back seat to COT.Take Tony, put him inJuniors car, take Jimmy, put him in Kyles car, Kasey to Martins car, they all will finish close to where they do now..Cookie Cutter tracks have led to Cookie cutter cars. Throw in Nascars habit of throwing "debris" yellows, and they pretty much dictate the outcome of most races. It's amazing how the outcome of a 500 mile race can be manipulated by the booth high above the racetrack that can see the dangerous piece of duct tape,or rubber tubing, way below the racing groove.. Thank God that Indy racing is improving..