NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow
Brett Bodine was again behind the wheel of the prototype joined by Kyle Petty in the Dodge based prototype for some multi-car testing. This testing session would entail swaping spoilers and rear wings while leading and following each other to compare driver reactions and computer data. While NASCAR would have prefered to have more cars available for testing, the other principal owners said they are waiting until NASCAR defines the final specs further before they spend anymore time or money on development.
Petty Prototype of the Car of Tomorrow
In addition to Daytona, the Car of Tomorrow has tested at the .75 mile oval of Richmond, the 1.5 mile tracks of Lowes Motor Speedway and Atlanta, and Talladega. It appears that this testing has finalized the placement of chassis, frame, roll cage and other major body parts while allowing room for adjustment to make each car unique. The reasoning is that with more adjustments available externally than that would eliminate the need to bend, shape or twist the body panels of the car for performance.
NASCAR's idea is for the new car chassis to be able to be used at any track without having to build a unique chassis for each type of race. NASCAR insists that this is not going to turn into an "IROC" kind of series and that once you place the decals on the cars they all will look as different as they do now. The NASCAR official involved continued to identify the cars as Ford, Chevy or Dodges and even Toyota's as Toyota is planning to announce their move out of the truck series into the stock car series later this month.