Checkered Past

Washington state track to wait

NASCAR's "car of tomorrow" is off and running - well, kind of - but at least one of the tracks of tomorrow is on hold for now.

International Speedway Corp., the track building and operating arm of the France family's NASCAR empire, has long wanted to build a speedway in the Pacific Northwest. Officials of both companies still do, but they're going to wait a little while.

ISC has abandoned hopes of winning state legislative approval - for the current session at least - for a package to help pay for a Kitsap County NASCAR track, the company's Grant Lynch told The Seattle Times on Tuesday.

Lynch, a former head man at Talladega Superspeedway, is now a vice president for ISC and has been leading the charge in Washington state. A similar bid in 2004, which envisioned a speedway in Snohomish County, was shot down when cost estimates went off the chart.

The current ISC effort asks Washington's taxpayers to foot roughly half the bill - roughly $166 million - to build and run a new track. While many NASCAR fans rallied behind the proposal, a Seattle Times article said ISC had not been able to find a sponsor for the funding bill. Further, the newspaper said, a key committee chairwoman had characterized the project as ridiculous.

Driving to Tomorrowland

Always liking a little irony with my coffee, I thought it was great to see the formal announcement about Toyota’s much-anticipated move into big time stock car racing made the same day Gary Nelson briefed the media about NASCAR’s “car of tomorrow.”

Those two subjects alone made the first day of the NASCAR Nextel Media Tour hosted by Lowe’s Motor Speedway quite a handful. Almost as much of a handful as the media tour’s formal name is a mouthful.

The speedway’s people have always done a superb job at hosting this annual event, which brings 200-plus writers, editors, reporters, camera crews and more media types to Charlotte from some 20 states. There's even that guy from the Netherlands who comes every year and, this January, there are some new Japanese faces in the crowd.

During the "one-on-ones" with drivers and other personalities, just think of the airport's baggage carousel after a long, maybe even twice-delayed flight. Except that the guys who repeatedly jump in front of you or otherwise cut you off have several pounds of video gear on their shoulders.

That's called "leverage" in the business.

The shop tours and announcements give all of us a much-needed racing fix as we await the start of a new season. And, as it is in other sports, there’s plenty of optimism on display during visits to race shops. For those still singing the familiar “wait till next year” refrain, time is almost up. Next year is right here.

So far, at this early stage of the media tour at least, I’ve been most impressed with the discussion about the car of tomorrow. It’s been said, and it’s certainly NASCAR’s hope, that the car of tomorrow will actually be a throwback. It’s going to be more ’55 Chevy and ’56 Ford or Mercury Marauder and Plymouth Superbird than anything we’ve seen on the track in ... well, decades.

Less reliance on aerodynamics, we’re told, will bring back the epic side-by-side battles of NASCAR’s yesteryear.

And that’s something, I think, a lot of fans would surely like to see.

But when NASCAR's Gary Nelson talked about the car on Monday, the biggest part of his pitch dealt with the safety and eventual economy of tomorrow’s race car.

It’s hard to argue with the safety side of it without sounding incredibly cold or worse.

But am I the only one who gets tired of hearing how NASCAR, a multibillion-dollar money harvesting machine, is out to save a few dollars for millionaire car and team owners?

I’m sure Carl Long, Kirk Shelmerdine and Morgan Shepherd appreciate NASCAR’s gesture, but they’re not the ones who’ve been driving up costs. It’s those other guys.

And one of those other guys, judging by what he told reporters Monday night, thinks NASCAR is just plain missing the fairway on this car of tomorrow drive.

“Aerodynamically, the car did not accomplish what they were looking to accomplish,” Ray Evernham said when the media tour stopped at his place in Statesville. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have to put a wing on it. ... If I wanted a wing, I’d go race sprint cars.”

“There needs to be more time,” Evernham said. “I think they did a decent job developing the chassis. I think there needs to be more time put into the aerodynamics, and I think the tire manufacturer needs to be involved. You can’t expect that car to run on the same tire we run on now. It simply won’t work.”

As for the savings?

“Is it going to save us money right off the bat? No,” the team owner said.

“If the car is done properly it can be a good thing for the sport. If it is not done properly - and right now NASCAR has got a lot to do with it - it’s going to be a mess. So, the good intentions are there. Now the plan has to be made properly and executed.”

Evernham isn’t the only owner with objections, and he isn’t even the most vocal.

Kyle Petty would like to see more teams taking part in car of tomorrow development. And, eventually, they will be.

NASCAR also on Monday released a timetable, a schedule for phasing in the new cars.

So this bus is going to run. It might take them a little while, but I believe all of the usual suspects will be on board when it does.

Even if - for now at least - they're all arguing about who should drive.