Red flags before green light

After he won last week's Car of Tomorrow debut in the Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, Nextel Cup driver Kyle Busch, a star of tomorrow, climbed out of his No. 5 Chevrolet and offered the following assessment of the COT: "I'm still not a big fan of these things. I can't stand to drive them."

Not exactly what you would call a ringing endorsement of NASCAR's initiative to phase in the COT in 16 races this season, including all 10 of the Chase for the Nextel Cup Championship, before fully implementing it in 2008.

Acknowledging Bristol revealed some issues that had to be addressed immediately -- most notably exhaust system failures, which, in some cases, resulted in elevated carbon monoxide levels in the cockpit and caused protective foam barriers in the driver's side door panel to melt -- NASCAR officials were not as quick to rush to judgment, preferring instead to build a broader body of evidence, which will include tomorrow's Goody's 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

"We came out of Bristol with a list of things to look at," said John Darby, director of the Nextel Cup Series, during a teleconference yesterday with Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition.

"Obviously, there was some exhaust system failures," Darby said. "We've talked to the teams that experienced those failures and have addressed them, or the teams have addressed them and are working on the problems."

Darby indicated some teams experienced tailpipe failures as a result of trying to use a "thinner overall material," he said. "In fact, when you apply the heat of the exhaust and everything, [the tailpipes] did crack and they did fail."

As for the overall performance of the car? "From a competition standpoint," Darby said, "my side of it is I don't know if we'll see that until we get to some bigger tracks, maybe Darlington [May 12] specifically, in regards to all the cars."

Asked what letter grade he would give the COT's debut, Pemberton initially gave it an A, but then said A-minus.

"The only reason there's a minus in there is potentially a couple of the problems with just the parts and pieces, whether it's the tailpipes or things of that nature," he said. "But that's where I'll put it."

Said Darby: "I'm going with a B because I want to incorporate into that whole process the garage operations, the inspection process, and what we expected it to do and anticipated and how the end result was, you know, everything that surrounds the entire weekend more than just the race."

In the midst of all the rule-bending at Daytona in February, Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president of corporate communications, warned the sanctioning body would be even less tolerant of the first team to circumvent the rules with the COT.

And so it seemed curious that NASCAR gave Greg Biffle and his Roush Fenway Racing team what seemed to amount to a free pass after postrace inspections at Bristol revealed Biffle's No. 16 car to be a quarter-inch low.

NASCAR took Biffle's car to the Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., for further study and found the right side of Biffle's car had settled because of a spring failure, resulting in no penalty.

"NASCAR understands now that with all of the things that we've had go on, I think that they kind of jumped to conclusions that we had figured out some way to beat the system," Biffle told Marty Snider and David Poole, hosts of "The Morning Drive" earlier this week on Sirius NASCAR Radio. "So we've been kind of accused by, let's say, the public, held in public court, that we cheated or whatnot, and that's not the case and NASCAR knows that."

When Mark Martin agreed to a limited schedule with Ginn Racing, he promised to step aside in time to allow 23-year-old rookie Regan Smith to take over the No. 01 Chevrolet, the car in which Martin nearly won the Daytona 500. A four-time series runner-up, Martin proved a man of his word when he turned over the keys to Smith at Bristol, forfeiting the lead in the Nextel Cup point standings. Martin, who spent last weekend in Lake City, Fla., watching his son, Matt, and Ginn Racing development driver Ricky Carmichael compete in Super Late Model races, will return to the No. 01 for Nextel Cup races at Texas April 15 and Phoenix April 21. "Mark really has a knack for teaching," said Smith, who finished 25th at Bristol. "When he talks, you listen. There's nobody better to get advice from." . . . AT&T, which merged with Cingular Wireless and is in the process of rebranding Cingular as AT&T Wireless, is pushing to get its logo on Jeff Burton's No. 31 Chevrolet, having filed a preliminary injunction Monday in US District Court in Atlanta. NASCAR officials contend the exclusivity arrangement with title sponsor Sprint Nextel precludes another wireless company from entering the series. Cingular and Alltel, sponsor of Ryan Newman's No. 12 Dodge, were grandfathered into the deal NASCAR made with Sprint Nextel . . . Craftsman Truck Series driver Brendan Gaughan will find it difficult to focus on today's race at Martinsville, Va., what with his beloved Georgetown Hoyas playing Ohio State in the semifinals of the NCAA Final Four. Gaughan, a former Georgetown walk-on who played for coach John Thompson and whose job in practice was to guard Allen Iverson, will show his Hoya pride on his No. 77 Chevrolet Silverado with decals of the Georgetown "G" on the deck lid and the school's mascot, Jack the Bulldog, on the truck's B-post. "Tom Buzze, my general manager, has said this week because Georgetown is in the Final Four that I have to finish in the top four," Gaughan said. If the Hoyas advance to Monday, Gaughan said he will be there. "I was at the East Regional championship game [last] Sunday," he said. "I'm really upset right now that I can't go to Atlanta for the [semifinals]."

Material from personal interviews, wire services, various sanctioning bodies, race teams, sponsors, and track publicity departments was used in this report.