An interesting article on NASCAR.COM in regards to how the small teams are affected this year with the COT.  

One of the reasons behind the development of the COT was to level the playing field for small teams that have a hard time completing with the big teams because they can only make so many cars. In the setups of the cars that having been racing over the past years, there would be as many variations of a team’s car as there were number of tracks. 

With the COT, in theory, it would be designed as such that all teams would have the same setup for all tracks with minor variations of spoiler and front-end adjustments.  This would in turn mean that smaller teams could better afford fielding a car and may allow for new teams to come in as well.

That may be the theory but in reality this year is especially hard on the small teams because now they have to run an additional car setup than before:  the many variations of setups for the standard car plus now the COT setups.

To read the article on NASCAR.COM, click on the following link:

NASCAR.COM – Smaller teams discovering salvation comes at a price – Mar 22, 2007