For those who say NASCAR doesn’t admit its mistakes, chairman/CEO Brian France begs to differ.
When asked what has been the biggest mistake he’s made to date in his 12-year tenure, France was rather upfront in a speech Friday in front of a number of high school and college students at the Detroit Economic Club in Dearborn, Mich.
The answer is three of the most controversial words in NASCAR history: Car of Tomorrow.
“We are going to make mistakes,” France said, according to the Detroit Free Press. “Occasionally, we make a big one now and again.
“I would say that if there is one thing we could have done better in the last 10 years under my watch, is when we launched what we called ‘the new car.’ It is now called the Gen-5. We just didn’t get the collaboration we needed to get from the industry, the owners, the drivers, the engineers and car manufacturers.
“They had a voice, but they didn’t have a loud enough voice, and so we changed that.”
The COT was introduced in 2007 and remained NASCAR’s main vehicle design in the Sprint Cup Series for six years.
But from the disappointment of the COT came the acclaimed successor, the modern day Generation 6 car that was introduced in 2013.
France replaced his father, the late Bill France Jr., in 2003. During the younger France’s tenure as the sanctioning body’s leader, NASCAR has undergone a number of major changes, not just the COT but also introduction of the Chase for the Sprint Cup and its subsequent major revision in 2014.
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