There may be a new sponsor opportunity for Jeff Gordon the next time NASCAR visits Talladega.
No Doze.
"I have never yawned in a race car in my life," said Gordon, whose strategy was to ride around at the back of the field in the early going and charge to the front when it mattered. "But I yawned back there. I like to think I have pretty good patience, but that's beyond patience. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in a race car. There's just nothing fun about that, but I knew it was the smart thing."
While the plan worked to perfection for Gordon, it didn't provide for much of a race Sunday, the first for the Car of Tomorrow on a restrictor plate track like Talladega.
"I've never had to do that before, where you're back there in the back, just kind of riding along," Gordon said. "I even told (team owner) Rick Hendrick earlier in the week when some guys were talking about strategy, that I can't do that, that we just needed to go out there and race and let the chips fall where they may.
"Thankfully they fell just in the right way."
There were many unknowns about how the COT would perform at a place like the mammoth 2.66-mile oval using the horsepower-sucking plate. But no one thought it would induce sleep.
Gordon wasn't the only one who spent most of the day just riding around.
Except for a few flashes of side-by-side racing early on and the final dash to the checkered flag, much of the 500-mile event was a follow-the-leader parade as drivers tried to protect their positions -- and cars.
"I think the racing was not very good," said Ryan Newman, who was in the mix for the win before crossing the finish line in fifth place. "I think the racing was disappointing -- to see single-file racing and the guy that wins the race is sitting in the back all day just lounging around."
Newman had his Dodge up front at some points but opted to play it safe and follow the lead of the majority of his competitors.
That might have been the smart move, but it wasn't one Newman wanted to necessarily follow.
"That's not racing to me," Newman said. "I hope it wasn't what NASCAR intended with this car. I'm not complaining about the car because the old car did relatively the same thing. We gotta do something where we can race a little bit."
Running in a line and saving your car until the end has really been a part of restrictor plate racing the last few years, so blaming Sunday's latest example completely on the COT is a bit unfair.
"It's the same as every other plate race," said Matt Kenseth, who got caught up in one of the day's accidents. "You didn't really get to see a race because even the leaders rode around for the first half because everybody was afraid of wrecking. I don't know if you really saw a race. I think out of 188 laps, you probably saw 30 laps of racing."
Veteran drivers like Kenseth realize restrictor plate races are a different animal than the other 34 points events, and taking the necessary measures to do well under those conditions is part of the game.
"That is what it is all about," said Bobby Labonte, who was in the lead pack early Sunday until he spun to help start the day's biggest melee, an 11-car pile-up. "All the cars are so equal you can't really do anything, so you just settle in and go single file."
But NASCAR will no doubt play with the COT aerodynamic package before the next plate race, which happens to be the Daytona 500 to start the 2008 season in February. Several drivers think modifications would certainly help provide better racing conditions.
"They can play with the restrictor plate and the wicker and the wing and gearing," said Dave Blaney who finished third Sunday. "They could change it all around. So the package is all right. It just maybe needs tweaking a little bit."
Those possible changes can't come a moment too soon for some.
"It was really, really boring," said Dale Earnhardt Jr. before he retired with a blown engine.
