As far as Kyle Busch is concerned, the "Car of Tomorrow" is yesterday's news.

"I said that I wanted to go out and win this race so I could tell everybody how terrible this thing is to drive," said Busch after taking the checkered flag in Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, the first race for NASCAR's newest Nextel Cup model. "I can't stand to drive them. They suck."

Kyle Busch on new model: 'I can't stand to drive them. They suck.' (Getty Images)

Tell us how you really feel Kyle.

Despite winning for the fourth time in his Nextel Cup career and giving team owner Rick Hendrick his 600th NASCAR win, the opinionated and outspoken Busch continued to bad mouth the COT in victory lane.

"It just doesn't turn," he said. "For me, it's just not very much fun to drive. It's hard to race around on the track with other competitors because it doesn't have a lot of maneuverability. With this thing, when you start to slide the front tires it continues to slide, sort of like you're on skis."

There was the usual slip sliding on display at Bristol on Sunday, which resulted in an average 15 caution flags for 90 of the 500 laps.

But the competition on display seemed much better than recent Bristol visits, when side-by-side racing was replaced by a mostly single-file parade.

Whether the COT, which was designed to improve competition and foster a safer environment for drivers, was the reason is a matter of opinion.

Jeff Gordon, who started from the pole only to then struggle with an ill-handling racecar before rallying back for an impressive third-place finish, isn't so sure.

"If the car is safer and races better, then I am all for it," Gordon said. "But we can't answer that question this weekend."

Gordon was one of the drivers who hated the COT before the weekend began. But after winning the pole and then coming home third on Sunday -- good enough to take over the series-point lead -- he's beginning to come around.

"Let me just say it's growing on me a little bit," he said. "The look of the car is the look of the car. The performance of the car, I feel like we've learned a little bit. I've said the whole time that whether I liked the car or not, we were going to do all we can to be competitive -- me as a driver and us as a team. And that was the goal we set out to do. I don't care what car it is. That's our goal."

Another one of NASCAR's goals with the COT was to bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots in the Nextel Cup garage and provide a more level playing field.

Indeed Sunday's race saw some evidence of that with drivers like CNC-Haas Racing's Jeff Green scoring a Top 10 finish and the under-funded BAM Racing team watching Mike Bliss come home 17th.

"From the tower, I thought it was a good race" said NASCAR competition director Robin Pemberton. "'I think you saw there were more competitors up front who had been there in recent history, or teams that aren't used to running in the top 10 or 15."

However Jeff Burton, who came up just short of running down Busch for Sunday's win, can't be certain things will level off for everyone just yet.

"I do believe, short-term, we have the possibility of a larger gap from first to last because it's so new," Burton said. "Some people are going to figure it out faster than others. Long-term, I think we have the opportunity for competition to be better because we're restricted in all the things we can do. Only time will tell. But I think the potential for closer racing is there."

The COT will get a second chance to impress next week when the Nextel Cup Series visits Martinsville Speedway, another half-mile bullring like Bristol, where "rubbin' is racin'" will be a big part of the race.

Chances are it will be another typical short-track affair with lots of spins, caution flags and high emotions as is usually the case at Martinsville, Car of Tomorrow or not.

But just maybe, the driver who wins the second-ever COT race will like it better than the guy who put his name in the record book as the first winner of the new era.

Or maybe not.

"Even if I win again next week," Busch said, "I'm still not going to like this thing."