Before it was introduced the current racecar in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series was called the “Car of Tomorrow.” Then NASCAR made a lame attempt to label it the Car of Today. Finally they settled on the COT. This past weekend in Indianapolis the car Showed How Irritatingly Terrible (insert acronym here) it really is.

Despite the “throw a business partner under the bus” proclamations coming out of NASCAR that the debacle at the Brickyard was a “tire issue,” thus shifting the blame squarely onto Goodyear, this was a COT failure, and a black eye for the sport. 

In case you missed it, here’s what happened: the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the oldest and most storied track in auto racing, is notoriously gritty. The whole thing used to be bricks until folks realized that bricks had the consistency of ice, and driving cars at high speeds on such a surface was inherently dangerous. It took a couple of spectacular deaths to bring that point home, but the owners got the message, and the surface was paved. They also cut the banking in the turns down from 18-degrees to the present 9-degrees. As racetracks go, that is almost flat, which means you have a two-and-a-half-mile rectangular track with almost no banking in the four corners.

To keep races from becoming demolition derbies, Tony George, the current owner and president of IMS, cut groves in the surface to help with grip. It worked, but everything in racing is a tradeoff. Rougher surfaces mean better hold in the turns, but the tires wear out quicker.

In past years the tire problem has worked itself out during practice and qualifying as cars “laid rubber” on the surface. But with the new car, the center of gravity is higher and the downforce (the grip that comes from air passing over the top of the car and pushing it down) is less. That means the right-side tires take all the loads as the car turns left. This week, the “soft” tires NASCAR mandated couldn’t handle it.

“Every lap. Every lap I was concerned about it. Every corner, for that matter,” said defending Sprint Cup series champion Jimmie Johnson, who won the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard by six car lengths over Carl Edwards. “As a group, we all knew we couldn't push the envelope. I knew at the end, a seven-lap shootout, I could blast it off in there and I'd be OK.”

Seven to 10 laps was the maximum anybody could run before the balloon-like tires burst. As a result, NASCAR threw the caution flag every 10 laps no matter what. It made for one of the most boring and embarrassing races in recent memory. Even the Performance Racing Network (PRN) radio guys, who are beholden to NASCAR for their jobs, called it “shameful” and “sad.”

“It's a really, really, really disappointing situation,'' said former Cup champion Matt Kenseth, who finished 38th. “This is one of the two biggest races of the year (behind the Daytona 500). I feel bad for the fans. We're running three-quarters speed because we're worried about the tires blowing out, and they still got blown out every eight laps.”

Disappointing. Shameful. Terrible. Embarrassing. Sad. And, unfortunately, predictable. Anybody who has followed the sport could have seen something like this coming, not because the technical glitch was evident, but because Brian France, NASCAR’s primus imperator, had fallen prey to the sin of hubris, changing the sport his grandfather founded in profound and not altogether useful ways, through fiat.

By royal decree, the Car of Tomorrow became the car of the here and now at every track this season. Calling the results mixed would be as rosy a picture as one could paint. This past weekend, fans witnessed the inevitable results of absolute power.

“If you are a good fan, and you didn't get what you wanted, it's OK to be disappointed and we can be disappointed right along with you,” said NASCAR’s vice president of competitions, Robin Pemberton. “We're here to put on the best races we can, and we do a damn good job of it most of the time…Not every race is a barnburner.”

Or, in the words of another supreme ruler, if they don’t like it, let them eat cake. That quote led to some rather unpleasant managerial changes. Let’s hope Brian France is a student of history, and that he humbly admits the error of his ways.