Any time NASCAR's new Car of Tomorrow was brought up around Jack Roush last year, the longtime team owner let everyone know exactly what he thought of the COT — not much.
New year, new tune.
"I guess maybe I was being a little unfair," Roush said.
"Everyone knows I've had my differences with NASCAR over the years," he added, "and I haven't liked a lot of things they've done. But this new car looks like it's going to work out pretty good for everyone in the long run. Let's hope so."
The COT is a bigger, bulkier box of a car intended to make the drivers' environment safer and to reduce costs by requiring teams to build fewer cars for tracks of different sizes.
Though Roush has come around, he still would rather NASCAR waited another year to introduce the new car, rather than run 16 of the 36 races with it this season.
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He isn't alone.
"I think if it was up to the teams and drivers and crew chiefs, we would like to see this car thoroughly tested more this year," Jeff Gordon said. "I think we recognize now how serious NASCAR is about this car, and that it's definitely coming. (But) we all would like to be just starting out the season in 2008 and not run it at all in 2007.
"You've got new teams coming into this (Nextel Cup) series that are having to build two cars and one that's going to be obsolete next year. ... It's kind of crazy. And from what testing I've done with the car, I haven't seen where it's offering up what they're hoping for."
Kurt Busch was more positive after running the fastest laps in a COT test at Daytona earlier this week.
"I thought it was great," Busch said. "I thought the car could handle any speed it wanted to go. It gets back to a little bit of what they have with the truck series — big drag that slows the car down aerodynamically, but an open motor that has the horsepower like we're used to at all our tracks."