Flying Cars

Racing Ruminations

Any hack columnist can predict the top five Bass Pro Shops 500 finishers. I predict the top five and the guy who will finish 17th!

LAST WEEK Top five: 2/5 17th: 0–1

SEASON Top five: 50/160 17th: 1–32

1. Kasey Kahne

2. Tony Stewart

3. Carl Edwards

4. Kyle Busch

5. Mark Martin

17. Ryan Newman

You’ve got to give NASCAR officials credit: when they make a change, they make damn sure that everyone will hate it. First they gave us the HANS devices, then the Chase for the Championship and now it appears that the Car of Tomorrow is the next gimmick that everyone loves to hate. Reed Sorenson is the latest to express his displeasure with the design which will debut in 2007. (Personally, I was shocked when I heard about Reed’s comments. I didn’t know he had a tongue. I figured he was some sort of mute or something.)

Now, if the COT could get even Reed Sorenson to speak out against it, I figured it was worth my time to look into it. When I heard about the Car of Tomorrow, it figured it would, like, fly and do other future stuff. How could anyone hate flying race cars? That’s like hating rainbows and Snickers bars, you un-American ass clowns.

Then I learned the truth. The COT isn’t a super-cool flying future car. It sort of looks like a drift racer tried to supe up an ‘80s Mustang. It’s boxy yet pathetically trying to look sleek—sort of like that time my neighbor painted racing stripes on his Kia.

Color me disappointed and confused—what do we call the Car of Tomorrow on the day after the 2007 Bristol spring race? The Car of Yesterday? Yesterday’s Car of Tomorrow? This car might actually break the delicate balance between space and time. If there is a new type of car developed in 2020, is that the Car of The Day After Tomorrow?

So I implore NASCAR to stop the development of the Car of Tomorrow. The future is too important to risk it on the Car of Tomorrow. The Car of Tomorrow, like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future could erase the future. That’s just not worth the risk.