NASCAR: BRINGING THE STOCK BACK INTO STOCK CAR RACING

It's ironic that the National Association of Stock Car Racing race a brand of car that is anything but stock. Yet there was once a time when at least the cars had some passing resemblance to the sort of machine that US buyers could find in their showrooms on Monday morning. That all changed when NASCAR adopted it's new regulations rather amusingly dubbed "The Car of Tomorrow". Apart from the fact that anything powered by a six litre carburettor fed pushrod V8 could hardly be looking towards the future, the fact is that they were just plain ugly. It was as if, inspired by their cousins at the Grand-Am, they set out to create a car even less aesthetically pleasant than the awful looking Daytona Prototypes. But this weekend at Daytona all that changes.