OK, folks, do we need any more evidence that the Car of Tomorrow needs some tweaking?

If you’re not a Jimmie Johnson fan, how interested were you about midway through last week’s race in Fontana, Calif.? Hey, this is my job and I really need to watch all the races, but I just couldn’t.

It’s nothing new to have a boring race in California. It would, in fact, be news if we ever had a good one there. Still, with so much on the line for a handful of drivers trying to secure spots in the Chase, we get ... nothing.

What has become increasingly clear about the COT is that the bigger the track, the worse the racing. The car can still put on a decent show on a short track (I hope this didn’t jinx Richmond), but the more air that’s available on the track, the worse the car drives.

On short tracks, drivers can make a difference with throttle control and, to a lesser extent, braking, but it seems the only thing a driver can do to help the car on an intermediate (1.5- to 2-mile) track is to find clean air. Otherwise, the car gets bogged down and won’t turn.

NASCAR wanted to make the car more ill-handling, which, the theory went, would put much more of an emphasis on the drivers’ skills. If that’s really the case, then why are Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth and Tony Stewart winless this year? Certainly Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards are in the upper tier of Sprint Cup drivers, but show me a panel of experts who would put either one over Gordon, Kenseth and Stewart.

Busch and Edwards, and to a smaller extent Johnson, have done so well because the new car happens to fit their driving style better. Denny Hamlin, a pretty fair driver himself who has struggled this year, knows where the blame lies in the poor racing.

“It’s definitely the race car,” Hamlin said. “This race car puts you in such a tight box of what you can work on. You basically run the same setup everywhere you go. So when a guy gets an advantage like the 99 (Edwards) has and the 18 (Busch) and now the 48 (Johnson) has definitely caught up, it just makes it that more magnified when we come to a big racetrack like California as to how good their car is.”

Following Johnson’s dominating win, car owner Rick Hendrick was less than enthusiastic, in part because Gordon’s poor season beffudles the owner. Johnson’s recent run of good races hasn’t helped Gordon’s team at all.

“You can look at the other teams, the 99 and the 18, the other cars on those teams are not as dominant as those two cars are,” Hendrick said. “And so it’s just this car. I’ve never seen anything like it since I’ve been in racing. It is so temperamental, and we’ve never worked harder than this year. I can’t remember testing any more, more meetings, throwing more things at it to try to get better.”

Which means NASCAR has failed to meet two of its three goals with the car. It has proven to be extremely safe, which was goal one. But it definitely hasn’t made the racing better and, with teams continually testing to try to figure the thing out, the third goal of making it cheaper to race is out the window.

And, get this, now comes word that NASCAR is ready to phase the car into the Nationwide Series. A test at Richmond is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday for teams to begin the process, though a timetable for the cars to hit the track hasn’t been set.

The only hope here is that NASCAR is beginning to look for answers to the car’s struggles, and in working with the Nationwide Series owners, maybe, just maybe, new information can be obtained that will help next year. Another test is set for Charlotte in October.

What we do know about the COT is that NASCAR will not abandon it, and so far all the begging and complaining from teams has fallen on deaf ears. Maybe we just haven’t yelled loudly enough.