Following Sunday’s race in Atlanta the Cup Series will enter its first off week of the season. While there won’t be any racing, teams will still be hard at work preparing for the impending switch over to a spoiler.

The upcoming test at the Charlotte Motor Speedway will be the first chance many of these teams have had to try out the new configuration at a track on the Cup schedule. With limited testing and existing notes and information that will soon become (at least somewhat) out of date could this spoiler become a game changer for the season?

The opinions among the drivers are mixed as we have seen over the last few months. Some say 2010 will be split down the middle, while others think the change won’t make much of a difference.

Thanks to the engineers, and NASCAR and team testing we have some idea what this move will do to the downforce of the car. The real test though will come when we have a full field at a place like Texas or Charlotte.

It’s only been since January that teams have known about this and with time ticking away until NASCAR takes the track with the new spoiler, it’s got to be an interesting time to be an engineer at one of these teams. For some organizations, like Richard Childress Racing, that are just getting back on track with their performance the overwhelming question is, ‘will this throw a wrench into our improvement.’ If you’re over at Hendrick, the question is, ‘are we going to be able to maintain our dominance.’

Despite questions they may be asking about what this means for them, they’re not alone in their uncertainty. As those in charge at NASCAR have noted it will take some time to see how this will change things. What happens if this move has no effect, or things actually gets worse? Without the benefit of a lot of on track testing this is a bit of a craps shoot.

Personally I don’t have a clue what’s going to happen. I believe there will be some effect, but given the talk from all parties involved I don’t necessarily believe the impact will be huge.

Change or no change, I can’t say I’m a fan of making a move like this several races in (though I applaud NASCAR for identifying and remedying a problem in a timely manner). However this plays out, it will no doubt be interesting to see how this testing goes and how well this change is received by drivers and fans alike.

So what do you think? Will the spoiler make a difference in the racing or is all this much ado about nothing?