COT and what Dodge is going to put on the street. Dodge is using the new Avenger body for its COT and Kurt Busch is always smart to point out the advantages of his brand. "I was up in Detroit for the auto show and got a chance to see the new Avenger. It's got a wing on the back and a mocked up front spoiler on the front. It looks like the car of tomorrow. I'm proud of a manufacturer for producing such a car that you can actually buy that actually races out on the racetrack. You don't see that with all the manufacturers nowadays." Should look pretty cool.

If you want to get to the nuts and bolts of an entirely new car, you go to the crew chief, right? Michael Nelson is the crew chief for the No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger and he said, "We started out with a 15/16th-inch plate and then went to a one-inch. We kept the same gear in for the first two runs and then made a plate change for NASCAR and then did a gear change so they got a back-to-back-to-back run. We came down here working with NASCAR as far as the specs and we tried to make it as legal to what we think the current spec is as possible and give those guys some data and get ourselves started working on the speedway cars. We're further ahead today than we were yesterday. I know some other teams have done some testing. It was just a good chance for us to get our feet wet and learn a few things. It's a different animal and it was a good opportunity to get a head start for Penske Racing. It's a racecar. It's actually pretty fun for Roy (McCauley – Crew Chief for Busch) and me today. We had a good time. It's a new challenge. It gives us a chance to work on something new, so we're excited about that. Actually we would have liked to run a little longer today.”

Kurt Busch seemed to be pumped up by his portion of the test and said, "I thought it was great. We had to make sure of fender clearances and we just went for two laps at a time and it really shook out to be positive. We played with spoiler angles, or wing angles, and the different combinations with the plate with fuel and air mixtures. I thought the car could handle any speed it wanted to go. It gets back to a little bit of what they have with the truck series, big drag that slows the car down aerodynamically, but an open motor that has the horsepower like we're used to at all our tracks. It was real interesting to drive. It was right on that edge of sliding all four tires, similar to what we get with the regular car when we're in the draft. It was comparable. It was a nice shakedown for us I think for us to get ahead of the competition. It was a treat to go out there and drive as fast as we did at one point and then get a chance to work on the car in a realistic box.”

Busch talks over the new wing of the COT with his crew chief Roy McCauley.

Roy McCauley is the Crew Chief of the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger driven by Busch and gave up more info. It wasn’t hard to see he, too, was amped by the test. "The Miller Lite Dodge was a lot of fun actually because it was something different.” said McCauley. “You really feel like you're cutting some new ground. We're far from learning everything we need to know, but we definitely learned some things to get started, enough to tickle the brain and kind of help out NASCAR. They helped us and it was a real nice situation.”

As to what team worked on what aspect of the car, McCauley said, "We kind of split things up. We worked on gear and plate and Mike Nelson and Ryan did the opposite trend of the way we were going to see which way it would go. We put a bigger plate on and changed the year, put a lesser plate on and changed the gear, trying to get a baseline of where things were at. We finished with a one-inch plate. We split it up. We did a one-inch and a one and an eighth. (The fast lap 191.118 mph was with the one and one-eighth of an inch plate). I think it's good to have the data. I don't see us racing that. If I had to guess I'd say it looks like a one-inch with a 370 gear. (It was) 100 percent (legal) as far as the rules as I have and I can get it.”

You know how gearheads can be with a new piece of hardware, right? McCauley was no exception when he said, "It's actually fun to work on something different because through the years you start beating your head into putting the same spring in, OK, do that. I won't say it gets monotonous, but you're trying so hard to pick the small specs out of anything. With this, there's a large window of opportunity and the people that do their homework the most will exploit that window of opportunity initially. That's why we're here. When the COT comes on line, the people who have done their homework are going to exploit it for a given amount of time. Now the garage area is full of the smartest racers in the world and they'll catch up. Everybody will catch up, but I think a couple of cars will be dominant because they've done their homework ahead of time.

Just how stoked was crew chief McCauley? Plenty! He went on to say, "I really wanted to run the rest of the day so we could put the cars in the draft and see how much of a hole was being made so to speak. Can you pull up from a hundred feet or can you pull up from 400 feet? With an Indy-style car it was large and I'm not sure what that effect is and we were going to work on that this afternoon. I'm sure it's similar. I'm just not sure how big it is."

Not too long after they started, rain cancelled the rest of testing. Maybe Mother Nature is not a fan of Roger Penske - yet.