While trying to rescue Charlotte’s then fledgling superspeedway, Curtis Turner was banned from racing by NASCAR founder “Big Bill” France for borrowing money from The Teamsters.

Now home to the construction of the NASCAR Hall of Fame at a prominent address in downtown right next to a new office tower used by the city to help close that deal, Charlotte was once the scene of a boycott by NASCAR officials. Track owner Bruton Smith, it seems, accepted U.S. Tobacco’s offer to pay bonuses to lap leaders competing in a series where title sponsor R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was paying huge bonuses at season’s end for Winston Cup points.

More recently, Smith suggested last year that he would move the track down the road if Cabarrus County officials didn’t allow him to build a drag strip for the NHRA, a new major dilemma in Daytona. At a time when NASCAR’s popularity was sagging around the edges after hitting middle age, yet another headache in Charlotte involving Smith getting in bed with a politically incorrect group, this one a bunch of straighliners no less, was not a welcome prospect.

There have been crossroads on the Charlotte track as well if you count the firery, fatal crash of Fireball Roberts, the debut of Janet Guthrie in a stock car, or Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s “invention” of the penalty box about the time R.J. Reynolds launched its all-star race known then as The Winston.

These aformentioned events on the track scared the owners of NASCAR enough to generate a little green around the gills. Roberts’ demise signaled the need to initiate safety at any costs for the first time. Guthrie, who arrived in Charlotte at the invitation of the track owners, scared NASCAR badly. If a girl could run on superspeedways, went their rather aged thinking, how difficult would it be preceived for anybody else to do likewise? And if Earnhardt Sr. kept running Daytona 500 winners like Bill Elliott and Geoff Bodine into the wall out of spite, NASCAR would turn into a carnival act with a bloodthirsty twist.

This time the problem falls on both sides of the wheel fence.

The vehicle formerly known as the Car of Tomorrow and grudgingly called the Car of Today sits at the center of the present dilemma, a controversy which has the rather untenuous excitement of a demolition derby on a figure 8 track no matter where you’re sitting. How this deal works out will have a lot to say about a rebound in the popularity polls and whether the move to a car built entirely by NASCAR, a “strictly non-stock,” will cut the mustard. It is the product of only the second era of safety at all costs following Earnhardt Sr.’s death in Daytona, therefore an expensive investment vehicle for the sanctioning body.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, the renown promoter at what is now called the Lowe’s Motor Speedway, sustained the hue and cry during the test days for the COT last week. “If we don’t get back to side-by-side racing,” he said while in the garage, “we need to change these cars.” There followed shortly afterward at Darlington’s similarly sized intermediate superspeedway a game of follow the leader for most of the 500 miles. And once again tire troubles played a role as some teams discovered their chassis set-ups led to failures.

Given the importance of Charlotte to NASCAR’s over-all health and the abundance of intermediate superspeedways on the schedule, a bad race or two in Charlotte in terms of little or no overtaking or side-by-side action will not go down well. It may even become the death knell of the COT as we know it, especially if next week’s 600-mile points race becomes a litany of tire troubles following this week’s all-star race, now sponsored by Sprint.

Complicating the circumstance is the fact a team recently purchased by Toyota, which goes by the name of Joe Gibbs Racing, is cleaning house in victory lane. It’s bad enough the American auto industry is suffering at the hands of the Japanese — or so goes the line of thinking by many a NASCAR fan — without getting its clock cleaned in the all-American sport of stock car racing.

There are two key issues that have led to all the political folderal — enough agitation that NASCAR added that two-day test in Charlotte to the schedule.

One key element concerns whether the COT chassis will remain dependent on aerodynamics in cornering on the intermediate tracks. On the short tracks, mechanical grip generated by the suspension is crucial and on the major superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega aerodynamics naturally continue to rule. Will both mechanical and aero grip become crucial when it comes to who corners fastest on the intermediate tracks?

If the COT remains dependent on aerodynamic downforce for grip in the corners on these tracks, then the procession of cars without much overtaking will continue at places like Charlotte and later this summer in Chicago and Kansas City. The well known reason behind this problem pre-dates the COT. Teams prefer suspensions where the springs in front are bound up and the cars run on just the shocks. This holds the attitude of cars better in the corners when it comes to aerodynamics. But it also makes them twitchy as well as fast. Since this kind of set-up is dependent on aerodynamics, running side-by-side in the corners will remain difficult.

Who corners fastest also concerns the driver equation. The fact Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin account for seven victories this season out of nine events on tracks other than Daytona and Talladega indicates younger, hungry-for-stardom drivers are adapting more quickly to the demands of the COT. It also indicates that the teams of Gibbs and Jack Roush have figured out the new chassis better. (The Hendrick Motorsports team ran best last year in the COT’s debut season, it now appears, due to an accelerated testing schedule that caught other teams flat footed.)

The opinion here: Gibbs and Roush have caught on to the mechanical grip/aerodynamic combination needed to get maximum cornering speed and to get the job done when it comes to overtaking. Busch, for example, has catapulted through the field on several occasions prior to moving from 23rd to first at Darlington. You can’t tell this writer that he’s having trouble passing or running side-by-side. Busch’s dissing of the COT’s handling, meanwhile, sounds an awful lot like Br’er Rabbit’s complaints about the briar patch.

The fact teammate Hamlin won on the short track of Martinsville indicates the Gibbs team has got something going when it comes to mechanical grip with the COT suspension. Hamlin led 380 of 400 laps at Richmond’s short track from the pole, too, before a tire issue got him.

For its part, the Roush team runs well enough to win, place or show unless tire or engine issues crop up. The team and its drivers may be taking more chances with their Goodyears — many a team could plead guilty to under-inflating the Racing Eagles for a quick fix and making the manufacturer look bad as a result. On the other hand, the tires on the Roush Fords have survived well enough and often enough to indicate it’s more than a matter of under-inflating the right front tire to get better performance in the corners. It could well be a different approach to suspension set-up that works better in conjunction with the COT than coil-bound front springs.

There’s been some murmurs of cheating, i.e. cars that run sideways down the straights and quicker through the corners due to how the bodywork is hung. Alas, a quick eyeballing of everybody’s bumpers in the garage during the Charlotte test indicates such accusations are pots calling the kettle black.

Speaking of tires, when NASCAR made the switch from bias ply tires to radials for all races, Earnhardt Sr. and Rusty Wallace each had trouble making the transition. They preferred the tires that required delicate, tail-happy balance in the corners that played to both their set-up and driving skills. After disastrous seasons in 1992, once they found crew members who could re-direct both their driving style and set-up approach for the more hidebound radials, these two driving greats bounced back to winning championships and leading the league in victories.

It’s just a hunch, but the complaints from Wheeler may actually address a long-standing problem in Charlotte that pre-dates those bonuses from the Skoal brand for lap leaders back in the early 1980’s. There’s never been a lot of side-by-side racing in Charlotte, much less spellbinding finishes. So promoter Wheeler may once again be covering his bases. As for teams that privately complain the COT has trailerized some great driving talent, I suggest a review of the 1992 season.

All this indicates the best drivers and best teams will all get the hang of the COT before the season is out. In sum, for some drivers and teams it’s the Car of Today and for others it remains the Car of Tomorrow.