By The Commish

Quick, what do these racetracks mean to the DuPont team? Bristol, Martinsville, Darlington, Infineon, Watkins Glen, Dover, Loudon, Richmond, Phoenix, and Talladega in the fall? If you said they're tracks where Jeff Gordon has had tremendous success—- 33 wins and 9850 laps led since his first championship-— you're right. Now here’s the tougher question: which tracks does the DuPont team feel the most doubt for 2007? Bonus points if you said Bristol, Martinsville, Darlington, Infineon, Watkins Glen, Dover, Loudon, Richmond, Phoenix, and Talladega in the fall. It's at these ten tracks, tracks where Gordon has either run well or nearly dominated since the beginning of 1996, where NASCAR will introduce its controversial Car of Tomorrow, a/k/a The Flying Brick, next season. Now add in Daytona, Talladega in the spring, Fontana, Indianapolis, Pocono, and Michigan. That's another 19 wins, another 2700 laps led since the beginning of the 1996 season, and all on the list for COT implementation in 2008.

That may very well mean trouble for Gordon's quest for title number five. Initial opinions on the COT after fall testing have been lukewarm at best, with most drivers doubting that the cars will race well in traffic or close conditions. Gordon has been a particularly vocal critic of the new design, saying "I'll admit, I'm not a big fan of the Car of Tomorrow. A lot of guys are having issues with the cars pushing, that they cannot get the push out of the car. That doesn't surprise me. If you look at the aerodynamics of the car, it's very rear downforce heavy. You can get all the rear downforce you want in the car. The front downforce, you're very limited." Gordon's criticisms have been echoed by other drivers, particularly Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth.

Suddenly, that dominant road course chassis, those great short track cars and concrete cars, the aerodynamically-perfect plate course cars. All are obsolete, relegated to Gordon’s driving schools, the Hendrick museum, or sold to other series. The COT is a totally new beast-— four inches wider, boxier, and heavier, with a controversial front splitter and rear wing that are supposed to improve competition in the series. That means that all the performance data, the setup testing, the analyses of on-track performance such as the notebooks that the team has on these tracks will essentially become obsolete along with the old Monte Carlo chassis.

Looking at it another way, only a dozen of Gordon's wins since the beginning of 1996 have come at tracks where the COT will not run in the next two years. And three of those wins were at Rockingham and North Wilkesboro, which are no longer on the Cup schedule. Thus, getting a quick and successful start with the COT program is essential if Gordon is to remain competitive in the series. The COT will run at eleven of the 26 qualifying races for the Chase in 2007 and in half of the Chase races, including its debut at Talladega. The team(s) that figure out the COT most quickly will have the best chance of making the Chase and competing for the championship. A slow start with the COT will probably doom a team to watching the banquet on TV—a fate worse than death (and definitely slower).

The pressure on the team will not only be to produce for Gordon's sake, but for the sponsors. While the COT supposedly will reduce costs in the long run, in 2007 it's going to be an economic sinkhole. Rick Hendrick told the media in November that "You have to maintain your fleet, build a new fleet and merge them in. It's going to take more manpower at time when more teams are starting up. It's going to put a lot of stress on everybody. Then we've got a new motor too so we've got to deal with that. So we have to run two parallel motor systems and two parallel car systems and integrate it in. It's going to be a challenge. It's going to be a wild year." Keeping high-profile sponsors happy if the team is slow to master the COT will add more stress and pressure to a grind Gordon already admits is wearing on him.

Hendrick's fellow owner Richard Childress has already done the math, and he doesn’t like it. His son-in-law Mike Dillon, RCR general manager, said that "Our budget next year will be for 30 cars per team." That means more than a hundred cars for 2007, traditional and COTs, for his three Cup teams plus a dozen cars of tomorrow for a limited-schedule team. This is after RCR built a new building for COT research, hired a number of new personnel, and expanded its engine testing program to accommodate the new program. By this figuring, Hendrick personnel will have to build as many as 130 cars for 2007, which an increase of almost 50% over 2006. The pressure to succeed will be nearly overwhelming.

As much as some Gordon fans hate to admit it, he's moving into the late stages of his career. Though he's publicly kept his options open, it's highly unlikely that he will race for more than five more full-time seasons, which are the limits of his current sponsorship deals. Now that he and wife Ingrid have committed to starting a family, there will be stronger pulls to leave the full-time Cup grind behind. And Gordon is wise enough to look at the struggles that part-time champions like Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte have endured and not want to go out in such a manner. Gordon says that as long as the team remains competitive, he remains healthy, and the grind remains manageable, he’ll keep racing. But the COT has the potential to affect the balance Gordon values so much.

So many goals are now within Gordon's reach. With one more victory he will tie Dale Earnhardt for sixth place on the all-time win list. With nine more wins-— theoretically possible in that five-year window—- he will tie Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison for third on that list. When Mark Martin misses a start this spring, Gordon will become NASCAR's Iron Man for consecutive starts. And of course, that fifth championship trophy still beckon, perhaps even brighter now that his teammate and protégé Jimmie Johnson has one to spur him on. But if the team struggles to master the Car of Tomorrow, Gordon may well decide that racing no longer appeals to him as much as the other facets of his life. Rick Hendrick may have underestimated the chaos that 2007 will bring. Fasten your seatbelts Gordon fans; it's going to be a bumpy ride.

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