NASCAR’s grand experiment, the Car of Tomorrow, took the next step last Saturday night in Phoenix, and it was not a big hit with many of the Nextel Cup drivers.

Other than an exciting late-race duel between eventual winner Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, the 312-lap Nextel Cup race on the 1-mile oval at Phoenix International Raceway appeared to most to be a plodding affair.

“I could see the leaders almost the whole race, and it was like we all were just out there running the exact same lap times,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr. “It was a parade. I was bored.

“No one could pass anybody else – we were all equal it seemed.”

Greg Biffle, who finished two spots ahead of Earnhardt in 17th, wasn’t too thrilled with the new car, either.

“I only saw what was around me, but it didn’t look like a good race, really, to me,” Biffle said. “I didn’t see a lot of side-by-side, I didn’t see the big everybody equal. I saw everybody sliding all over the place.

“And NASCAR’s claim to fame is they want them hard to drive. Well, it’s not that they’re hard to drive, it’s just that they’re not like driving a race car. They’re like giving us Pinewood derby cars and saying, ‘OK, everybody, this is what you’re going to race.”’

Biffle said he thought the biggest problem was that the new COTs weren’t racy.

“You couldn’t race anybody – and that’s what we want to do,” he said. “It’s our passion, it’s in our blood – we want to race them.”

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