Although some drivers tried to find positives on NASCAR’s ‘Car of Tomorrow’, which made its debut at Bristol Motor Speedway last Sunday, other drivers made it plain how they feel about the new car.

“I can’t stand to drive them,” race-winner Kyle Busch said after beating Jeff Burton in a last-lap sprint to the finish line. “I didn’t see any highlights out there.”

“The car was terrible,” he added. “It’s hard to set up and it’s hard to drive. I don’t remember anyone complaining about the old ones. I told my team before the race that I hoped I could win it so that I could tell everybody how bad it is.”

Even Mark Martin, who ended his streak of 621 straight races to watch Bristol from his living room, noticed how calm things were.

“I thought the COT handled poorly enough that the guys actually didn’t run over each other because they didn’t have good control of their car,” Martin said. “It was a cleaner race than what we normally see because the cars were so hard to control, they weren’t able to get in there and mix it up.

“It’s hard for me to understand how they are ever going to get this car to race well consistently.”

Jeff Gordon, however, was a little less critical.

“There were positives,” he said. “We made passes on the outside I was surprised by. I’m still not crazy about this thing, but it’s growing on me.”

But Gordon also explained that his main beef with the COT is that it’s different from what he’s used to. Chevrolet rolled out an Impala SS for the COT, which will be phased into competition over the next year, and Gordon prefers his old Monte Carlo.

“The current car drives better, it’s got more downforce, it’s got more grip, it has better feel,” he said. “So if you compare (the COT) to that car, you’re not going to like it.

“But if NASCAR sees the results that they want to see on the race track, then we need to get rid of the Monte Carlo and just go to this thing because you’re never going to like it compared to the car that we have.”