Ron Kantowski nearly nods off at ‘Car of Tomorrow’ testing

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Let's say you had watched a few of NASCAR's finest put its "Car of Tomorrow" through its paces at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Thursday.

Would that then make the Car of Tomorrow the Car of Yesterday?

This is the kind of stump-the-panel thought one has when he's sitting all by his lonesome, surrounded by 140,000 or so empty seats. The solitude is so deafening you can almost hear the stubble on Tony Stewart's chin growing in the off-limits garage area. (OK, it was actually Wednesday, but the Car of Two Days Ago just didn't sound right.)

Then one of these gentlemen - or even Tony - starts his engine and the deep thoughts cease. I was just finishing my hypothesis for peace in the Middle East when Stewart's primer-gray race car, virtually barren of decals except for a giant No. 20 on its door and roof, rumbled to life. It sounded like a grizzly bear that had just rolled out of bed.

If you think the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round, you should see those race cars on test day.

Touch the apron at the start-finish line, drift up to the wall, dive into turn one, drift back toward the wall coming out of turn two in the shadows of those giant billboards that pay the bills: Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Dodge, Nikon, South Point, Sam's Town, Nextel, Toshiba.

Say hello to the wall on the backstretch, dive down into 3, drift ... up ... to ... the ... wall ... exiting ... 4. And do it just that gently. Or you'll add to those Goodyear smudges on the Dodge banner.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Hey, Tony, that three days' growth looks pretty lame. But gee, your hair smells terrific.

After a handful of laps, the cars would pull into the pits, where a phalanx of mechanics dressed like Bill Belichick - think charcoal gray hoodies - would insert things: tire pressure gauges, laptop computers, a mirror into the cockpit to see if the driver was still breathing.

This is how it went. Hour ... after ... hour ... after ... hour. I was just about to swear I would never, ever make fun of another Grapefruit League game featuring the Tampa Bay Rays when I felt a tug on my elbow. It was Security. I could tell by his dark glasses and crackling walkie-talkie that he meant business.

This Car of Tomorrow testing is such top-secret stuff that they give you a number and take away your name.

I was going to tell the guard mine was Agent 13 - from "Get Smart" - and the reason I was standing on top of the media center was that I couldn't find a grandfather clock in which to hide. But I didn't know if he would see the humor in that. Besides, he turned out to be a nice guy. He let me stay.

A few minutes later Jeff Burton, one of NASCAR's finest, asked to lower the cone of silence before speaking to reporters. He had a death of a cold and he didn't want us to catch it. Had it been Stewart, who doesn't get along with the media - or anybody else, for that matter - I am sure he would have sneezed right on us.

Burton said the Car of Tomorrow - er, Today, which in theory will make racing more competitive - is a little harder to drive than the Car of Two Months Ago because of the aerodynamics. Only he called it "mechanical grip." As for the cars being safer, he said that was "hocus-pocus" being perpetuated by somebody who doesn't drive them.

All I wanted to know was whether testing is as tedious as it looks.

"The way I look at it, it's like a basketball player practicing or watching film," he said, his nasal passages sounding more clogged than turn one at Bristol.

When you drive for a team that performed like Will Perdue last season, you really don't mind practicing or watching film. Even when you're sick.

"Any time there's an opportunity to test, I raise my hand," Burton says.

Just don't try to shake it. You might catch something.