The first day of practice and qualifying for the Car of Tomorrow came and went Friday, and the NASCAR sky didn't fall.

All 49 cars attempting to make the race passed inspection, though NASCAR officials did let a few things slide this weekend to get them on the track. And there wasn't one wreck or even a bad spinout in a 90-minute practice session.

Talk about what the car looked like – consensus in the garage area is it's ugly – gave way to figuring out how best to get it around the track. And that's something that crews and drivers do every week, no matter what car they bring to a race.

"It has four wheels and a big piece of sheet metal around it last time I checked," said Brandon Thomas, crew chief for the No. 96 DLP car driven by Tony Raines. "We don't make the rules; we compete. There are different things we worry about on this car that we don't on the other, but it's still about making adjustments. We're going to go out and be as fast as we can. That's all any of us can do."

This is still tiny Bristol, so expect plenty of bumping, grinding and wrecking once the green flag waves on Sunday. But there might be more cars than usual trading paint because the Car of Tomorrow is four inches wider than the current car. The back is longer, so drivers must be careful entering the pits. And the stops might take longer as crews adjust to working around the bigger car. Those are just some of many questions that won't even begin to get answered until Sunday's race begins.

"There are a lot of questions from the speed standpoint," Jeff Burton said. "What do we need to do to go fast? Then there are other questions, the what-ifs. What if you get in the back of somebody? What's going to happen? We still don't know how these cars are going to cool yet. There are a lot of things we have huge questions about. We'll be a lot smarter Sunday evening than we are right now."

But not nearly as smart as they'll be in a few months, after the COT drives on several different types of tracks, including the flat half-mile oval at Martinsville Speedway, the 1-mile Phoenix International Raceway and the 1.3-mile Darlington Raceway.

NASCAR didn't choose Bristol as the car's guinea pig by accident. Drivers can get anything – including a COT with missing parts – around the track. That's part of the beauty and excitement of Bristol. It means if teams discover problems with parts on the COT, it won't have nearly the effect on the race that it would at larger tracks. NASCAR can use this week and next weekend at Martinsville, a flatter half-mile oval, to iron out any kinks that might arise before the car gets to a bigger speedway like Phoenix.

Introducing the COT at Bristol also allowed NASCAR to let some cars that were a little off on certain things get through inspection because the track doesn't require the same aerodynamic dependency of some other tracks. The process was more a tutorial for crews so that they know exactly what's expected in future weeks. Some cars that qualified this weekend won't qualify in Phoenix.

But that's nearly a month away. This weekend, every team is dealing with the same unknowns. They are all fairly clueless when it comes to how their car will react with 42 others racing as hard as they can. The teams that haven't had the start to the season that they'd like hope that a new car may bring new hope. Crews could hit on a combination that works and maybe take advantage for a few weeks or longer.

A few did that for at least one day on Friday.

Kasey Kahne, who is 36th and needs a good finish to get in the top 35 to get an automatic spot next week, was second and will start in the front row beside Jeff Gordon. Jeremy Mayfield and A.J. Allmendinger, driving Toyotas, made their first race of the season. Dale Jarrett qualified on time and didn't have to use his past champion's provisional.

But for the most part, the car changed but the drivers near the front didn't. Gordon, who has five wins at Bristol, won the pole. Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart will start in the top 10.

"I don't really think we're going to see a much different Bristol than what we've seen in the past," Gordon said. "We have to wait and see."

NASCAR Nextel Cup Food City 500, 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (Ch. 4, KLLI-FM 105.3)