Well the Car of Tomorrow (COT) seems to be a success. Even though the speeds were quite a bit slower than recent years, the competition level seemed to be above recent years too. There were only three or four retirees in a 500 lap event, enough cautions but nowhere near a record, and David Ragan, Juan (Johnny Montanna) Montoya and Robbie Gordon did everything they could to keep it exciting, one of the radio broadcast guys even called Juan the speed-bump. Between the three of them they were involved in all but a couple of the cautions in one way or another. After another good start, having Stewart, Kahne, Sadler, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer on my team I was feeling pretty good about my chances, Tony led over 270 laps before having a new problem with the new COT fuel pump which is mechanical instead of electrical like in the traditional cars. The drive cable snapped under the drivers tunnel and he coasted around to his pits and went 35 laps down before repairs were affected, to bad for Tony, no one could touch him on the track, it took an equipment failure on untested systems to stop him, when the failure occurred there were only 7 cars left to be lapped by the 20, and I was in 2nd place in the fantasy league. Rich was 6th Mike was 13th and Travis was 17th. The pre race ceremonies were awesome as usual with four separate passes by the Jets overhead first all four, then two then one solo doing a wing wave, then the other two with a vertical burn over the track bowl. Those all followed the anthem and the card stunts. (Pictured Above)
Chuck Pace © 2007
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