Yeah, Glen, this is all fascinatin' but where are the Chevys in your life? They started moving in when I was an Automotive Editor at HP Books; continued when I worked for MSD Ignition; and then got fully calibrated as an Editor of Circle Track & Racing Technology (for two separate tenures -- either I or they weren't learning). Truth be told, I thought that Chevy made great towing engines -- I believed that a pushrod V8 was hopelessly outclassed by imported engines with overhead cams and aluminum heads and blocks. Must have been all those Sports Car Graphic mags I read as a kid. In my defense, I read Hot Rod, too, and tried to draw Rat Fink most of my elementary and junior high years. Today, my son draws it better than I do.

The guy that fully expanded and instructed my thinking on the worldwide importance of the Chevy V8 was a one-of-a-kind original, Smokey Yunick. I had the great fortune (some might say I ultimately deserved it) to work with him at Circle Track. I got to edit his technical and feature writing, which led to some epic name calling (by him), but it was an important and invaluable history lesson for me on the "greatest prime mover" as he called it. Oh yeah, I learned a bit about the technical effort of racing it too from Smokey -- the guy was there at the near beginning!

Fellow MaxChevy columnist Jim McFarland has also contributed to shaping my tech background on it, as have a number of NASCAR engine builders, including the late Randy Dorton and his patient brother Keith.

I first got exposed to NASCAR when my dad would watch it on those '60s segments of Wide World of Sports -- you know between barrel-jumping on skates and skeet-shooting in

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Borneo. He bought a '60 Pontiac Catalina with a 389-CID and 4-bbl Rochester 4G carb in '62 because that was the hot lick in NASCAR in that era. Little did I know that I would still be driving it around campus (and to Jaurez, Mexico) in the late '70s, and one day beginning in the late '80s have access to Cup engine shops and teams. I've been following and reporting on NASCAR and stock car racing from the short tracks to the superspeedways, from Earnhardt to Earnhardt Jr., since then. Enough!

What about this year's Chase? I hammered it when it was first introduced. The only NASCAR contrivance more loathsome and contrary to the spirit and point of racing is its "Lucky Dog" free pass (which I still thinks sucks). But as soon as I fully accepted the NASCAR mind-meld that the sport evolved (because of TV) from racing to entertainment, I see the Chase's "playoff" mentality brilliance -- particularly if you are fighting for TV ratings against that TV juggernaut, American football (not soccer) in the fall.

Now, the Chase does need some tweaking -- how two-time Cup champ and, last year's reigning titlist Tony Stewart, didn't make the Chase is just bad marketing. And if Kasey Kahne, who won the most Cup races this year, had not made the Chase, the tweaking might have started this week. NASCAR is nothing if not game to changing their rules, so expect some sort of "Wild Card" spot for the Chase to open up in the future. More points for a Cup win is getting talked about. The Chase will be hailed as one of Brian France's marketing hallmarks in NASCAR's history.

Now, the Car of Tomorrow is a "frickin' disaster" as one of my team insiders calls it. This pig is coming in 16 races in 2007, 26 in '08, and the full 36 in '09, whether the teams or manufacturers like it or not. You want to play NASCAR, you do it by their rules. Eventually it will get sorted -- there are lots of smart people on NASCAR teams. But it is going to cost way too much time and money. As the racing saying goes, "You can't make a pig into a race horse, but you can make a pig damn fast!"

NASCAR does not have to foot the COT bills, the teams and manufacturers do. Hey, why not make it worth their expense and effort by establishing team franchises so all these completely new cars have some future worth? The safety merits of the COT are admirable -- beefing up the roll cage and moving the driver more to the center of the car (like some sports cars, heaven forbid), but even they were called into question by Jeff Gordon after a test run of the COT at Michigan in late August and noted in MIS press info:

"Well, I don't see that there's that much more room other than headroom," said Gordon. "I still have my reservations and concerns. My seat's moved further inside the car to the right, but I'm closer to the door bars than I was before. To me, there's not really any big gain there. For me, headroom's not an issue in the current car we have, so that was never an issue that we focused on.  But I'm happy that it's going to work out for those [larger] guys. By itself, the car drives pretty good," continued Gordon. "My whole thoughts and concerns have always been what it's going to do in a pack of cars and that's, you know, what we're going to find out here, a little bit later on." Later comments after this test said that the COT is a real handful in traffic according to my sources.

When someone of Gordon's racing prowess has "reservations and concerns" you can translate and amplify that to, "Why in the world are we doing this?" I know, I'm putting words into his mouth, but that is the general thinking that I'm getting in the garage area and the shops. Has NASCAR gone so far that they can't bail out on the COT and will ride it into the ground? They are not noted for changing their minds once on a path, but this is one time they should seriously consider it.