Michael McDowell's Texas CoT Car Still Intact Over A Decade Later

Michael McDowell unwillingly tested the durability and safety of the Car of Tomorrow during a qualifying session at Texas Motor Speedway in 2008.

McDowell’s #00 right front sway bar broke, slamming the car head-on into the wall going 185 miles-per-hour to zero miles-per-hour. The car flipped in the opposite direction eight times with fire coming out of the engine compartment. The car would land on its tires with the safer barrier of which he hit standing in the background, pushed in with a big black mark at the point of impact.

Almost immediately after the car stopped everyone on TV and at the track saw McDowell climb from the car under his own power. It was an absolute shock that he walked away from what was such a fast and violent fiery crash. McDowell was completely fine and would race the next day in a backup car. The CoT was credited to saving his life along with the HANS device and safer barriers that the track had in place in the turns.

More than a decade later the car lies in Dale Earnhardt Jr’s., racecar graveyard, looking exactly how it did that April day in Texas.

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