Mike Mulhern

Ryan Newman Pulls the Upset in beating Toyota’s Stewart and Kyle Busch in the Daytona 500

By Mike Mulhern

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
Tony Stewart made a rare mistake, perhaps even two, while leading in the final moments of the Daytona 500.
And teammate Kyle Busch made two critical mistakes too at the end.
So it was Ryan Newman, with a big push – “a push from Heaven,” he said later—from teammate Kurt Busch, coming from out of nowhere during a crash-marred final 30 minutes to upset Toyota strongmen Stewart and teammate Kyle Busch to win Sunday’s 50th running of the NASCAR season opener—in a major stunner.
Newman and Kurt Busch, Roger Penske’s Dodge duo, hadn’t done much all Speedweeks, or really in quite some time on the NASCAR tour. Penske, despite all his Indy-car success, had never won at Daytona. Newman hadn’t won in more than two years. And Kurt Busch, running a backup car, never seemed in the 500 game after his Shootout run-in with Stewart a week ago.
But in the final seconds of this race Kurt Busch was the key figure….in a race his younger brother Kyle had dominant right to the very end, in a brilliant performance.
Going down the backstretch of the last lap Stewart, while leading, dived to the inside and gave Newman and Kurt Busch the high line. Stewart dropped low off the second corner to try to hook up with his own teammate Kyle Busch.
“I know Tony was mirror driving, and he saw his teammate coming, and he wanted that push,” Newman said of that critical moment. “I was going to shuck-and-jive him down the backstretch. But then he opened the door; the seas parted. Then Kurt was the push from Heaven that made it all happen.
“Tony was very much a sportsman; he could have made that car extremely wide, but he chose to race.”
And it was a drag race back to the finish line, with Newman and Kurt Busch finishing 1-2.
“This goes to the top of the charts for Penske Racing,” Penske himself said after ending a 30-year drought here.
Stewart was leading at the white flag, with Newman right behind him. Kyle Busch had made a move to the inside on the restart with three to go, but then had to back off because he went below the out of bounds mark and dropped back to give back the positions he might have gained. But that probably cost Kyle Busch any shot at the win; he couldn’t rally back in time.
“Leading at the white flag and finishing third…what can you say,” a clearly dejected Stewart said. “I just made the wrong decision on the backstretch, to get down with Kyle. And Kurt stayed glued with Ryan.
“I don’t know if I could have changed anything. I don’t know if I made the wrong decision; if I had try to block them, I might have caused a wreck.
“I thought we were going to have a fun hair (Stewart had promised to cut his locks if he won his first 500). Kyle and I had absolutely the fastest cars. We talked all week about the teammate part…and then I hung him out at the end. But then with three laps to go you’re trying to win the Daytona 500.”
Stewart was referring to his move to the outside on the final restart with three laps to go, while Kyle Busch went to the inside to split around Jeff Burton for the lead.
Stewart got a push from Newman to get the lead.
But Kyle Busch had gone below the line and had to penalize himself a few spots, or risk a NASCAR black flag. That turned out to be one of the crucial moments of the day….for both Kyle Busch and Stewart.
“Probably one of the most disappointing days of my racing career,” Stewart said.
“But I’m happy for Ryan. He’s a fellow Indianan, and he’s a good friend of mine.
“Kyle finally got up to me off turn four, but by then we were too far back. If we’d had another lap, it might have been different.”

Tony Stewart (left) and teammate Kyle Busch discussing Daytona 500 strategy

(Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

“I know I’m supposed to probably get busted for passing below the (yellow) line, but I was forced down,” Kyle Busch said. “Luckily I got away with that.
“Stewart could have moved up and blocked Ryan’s momentum, but he decided to stick down low and stay with me to see what we could come up with.  I wasn’t getting a big enough push from behind to get up to his back bumper.”
It was quite a comeback from Stewart, who wasn’t even in the hunt the first couple of hours, barely hanging in the top-20. “For the first part of the race I thought I had one of the worst cars on the track,” Stewart said.
“We didn’t have a car to win, and I’m glad I was there to help Ryan win,” Kurt Busch said. “My car just didn’t quite have the muscle it needed.”
Kurt Busch said that Stewart might have second-guessed the possibility of jumping to the outside back behind Newman on the backstretch, because it was Kurt Busch out there…and Kurt Busch and Stewart have had several run-ins.
“Maybe he did think twice about jumping up high because it was me up there,” Kurt Busch said. “But instead of worrying about who was up there, he should have just gone there.
“If Stewart had jumped up in front of us, I’d have pushed him too.”
Earnhardt conceded “we obviously didn’t have a good enough car there most of the day. But we ran well. I am real proud of my team and the effort we had.
“We struggled a little bit, just trying to get good, get great. We got pretty good near the end. I made a lot of poor choices where to make my runs and what to do with them. Nobody really wanted to help anybody….and I didn’t either. You get runs, you go.
“Ryan certainly deserves what he got. But we are pretty proud. We are going to build on this. This is a great finish for us to start the season. I think we are going to have a lot of fun this year.”

GM Brings in the Heavy-hitters for it’s world-wide battle with Toyota

By Mike Mulhern

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
General Motors and Toyota are not only neck-and-neck on NASCAR’s tracks but also in their battle for leadership in world-wide car sales. And John Middlebrook – GM’s long-time man-in-NASCAR – is the guy in charge of his company’s flanking maneuver, through China, Russia, India and other hot markets outside the U.S.
So Middlebrook is here at Daytona International Speedway for this particular Speedweeks ostensibly as just a spectator.
Officially he’s GM’s vice president of global sales, service and marketing, but unofficially he’s a key cheerleader in pumping things up in the fight against Toyota, and rallying the troops on every front. And this Daytona 500 was the scene of the latest battle between the two titans.
Toyota, which has taken eight years to get to this point in its NASCAR adventure, is in its second season on the Cup tour, this time around having added the powerful Joe Gibbs operation to its roster….a bitter blow for GM and Chevrolet.
Tony Stewart in a Toyota? That has to hurt, since GM racing – first in Indy-car, then in NASCAR – helped make Stewart the star he is today.
Not since Ford lost Jeff Gordon to Chevrolet in 1992 has a driver move been so dramatic.
How did GM lose Stewart?
“We certainly made a competitive offer to J. D. Gibbs and the team,” Middlebrook says. “We didn’t want to lose Tony, but it was a business decision for them. Obviously Toyota came in with a better ‘bid,’ if you want to look at it that way.
“We like Tony a lot. We still sponsor his World of Outlaws car, so he’s got a big Bowtie on those.
“But last year we won 26 races and Toyota won zero. The season is just starting, and we have extremely strong teams with Hendrick, Childress and DEI.
“This is going to be exciting, and frankly we like the competition and the attention. It’s good for the sport, and what’s good for the sport is good for us.”

GM’s John Middlebrook has been fighting NASCAR battles for years, and now the target is Toyota
(Photo credit: GM Racing)

Middlebrook has been fighting GM battles for some 40 years, and he’s been persuaded to postpone retirement several times the past few years, most recently to help launch the company’s new ‘global sales’ department, where he now focuses considerable energy on China and India.
Middlebrook’s NASCAR roots run deep, of course, all the way back to the 1960s and Bill France Sr. He ran Pontiac in the 1980s and was deeply involved in the Roger Penske Pontiac operation during those glory years. And Middlebrook was here last year as a special dinner guest of his long-time friend Bill France Jr.
Middlebrook is not just another Detroit ‘politico’ running through race track suites in search of free hors d’oeuvres.

The ‘Chevrolet’ marketing push world-wide is relative new. Buying Korean car maker Daewoo gave GM a quick opening in Europe: “We took the Daewoo signs down in Europe and put the Chevrolet signs up and started selling Chevrolets, and almost doubled the business overnight. Which is the power of the brand,” Middlebrook says.
“Now that we’re doing global platforms I think we’ll be able to really move the Chevrolet brand and the breadth of the portfolio in these global markets a lot quicker.
“It’s still a country by country thing. I think China would be where we’d go first (with Chevrolet racing); we’re selling over 100,000 Chevrolets and heading toward 200,000. Russia and India are both opportunities too.”
The goal is for GM to become the first car maker to sell one million cars a year in China.
“We’re getting a lot more pull in China,” Middlebrook says. “So ‘What kind of motorsports should we get in?’
“We’re doing rally racing with Chevrolet in Europe, very successfully. We have a V-8 sedan series in Australia.
“So it’s going to happen (Chevrolet racing in the Far East).
“In the last three years, I’ve been putting Chevrolet into Russia and India and China and South Africa and the Middle East….and what I’ve found is these people are watching this Daytona 500, and they understand the brand, they see the NASCAR results in the newspapers, it does transfer.
“The formula NASCAR has is a pretty good formula, so I think somebody will pick that up at some point.”
But so far Middlebrook says he’s just “watching” the novel SpeedCar series of NASCAR-type stock car races (with cars and engines built in North Carolina) in the Middle East and Far East, part of a new Formula One marketing game.

One hot issue here in stock car country, as NASCAR executives prepare to rebadge their Triple-A series (this season under Nationwide sponsorship, after so many years with Busch), there is a push for those cars to be remarqued to something more sporty and trendy – and demographically desirable—than Fusion, Impala and Camry, the brand logos on the Cup side. (For example, nearly 60 percent of Fusion sales go to over-40s, and nearly 65 percent of Camry sales go to over-40s).
Middlebrook’s view of what GM marketing should do with NASCAR’s Saturday series?
“Getting a pony-car series would be great, I was just thinking about that,” he says. “Of course, Toyota wouldn’t be able to be in it because it doesn’t have a pony-car,” he added with a laugh.
“We haven’t said yea or nay on what model we may use. We sell 300,000 Impalas a year, and the Impala SS is a good product, and we’re happy running it in both series. But it’s pretty easy to change over the face and make it a Camaro or whatever. The Camaro could be; it’s something we’ll look at.
“We’re obviously going to compete with the Mustang and Challenger in the marketplace, so there’s nothing wrong with competing on the track.”
Maybe relaunching the IROC series might be a venue?
“Sure, sure, if they want to do that,” Middlebrook said. “But then how many series can you support. The Trucks are still having a little trouble getting sponsorship.”
(An aside – Toyota made a TV sponsorship bid for this year’s Truck series, to have that tour’s 25 events billed as “such-and-such, presented by Toyota.” That would have made for some curious title packages: The Ford 200, sponsored by Toyota, or the Silverado 250 sponsored by Toyota. NASCAR officials apparently shot that down at the last minute after protests from rival car makers.)

Despite all the teeth-gnashing up in Detroit, over cars sales and gas pricing, Middlebrook says GM’s support of NASCAR is stronger than ever: “We’ve got to market, and we’ll be spending a lot of advertising. When business isn’t great you really should be spending more on marketing your products. And this is a great venue for us.
“NASCAR is certainly not going to suffer, from a support standpoint. We’re getting a lot of exposure and generating a lot of leads.
“We measure it all very carefully, as we do all our expenditures. We track it all very carefully. And we see a good return on investment in this sport.
“We’re racing Impalas because that’s a big seller for us. But this is much bigger than just an individual brand; it’s all about Chevrolet, and getting the fan base loyal to Chevrolet, and expose the Bowtie.
“And we’ve been talking about Camaro (racing) down the road.”
Toyota executives actually wanted to put just ‘Toyota’ on the nose of its Cup cars, but NASCAR officials insisted the car maker pick a brand, even though Toyota’s whole NASCAR venture is designed to sell more trucks, because its Camry is already a best-seller.
“It could be just ‘Chevrolet,’” Middlebrook concedes. “But it doesn’t hurt to throw in a big brand on top of that.”
For car companies, it may not be win-on-Sunday, sell-on-Monday, but Detroit certainly makes hard-sell car pitches each NASCAR weekend.
At NASCAR tracks “we go for sales,” Middlebrook says. “The three reasons we race: First, to win, of course. But, second, we want to make sure it’s relative to our fan base…and NASCAR certainly has a great relative fan base for Chevrolet. And, third, we want to get a good return-on-investment.
“Sports costs more all the time. So we need to gain more leads, though the digital – Internet – and at the track.”
However, Detroit’s investment in NASCAR racing, to be honest, would still be a bargain at twice the cost. “I don’t know if I’d want the word out we’d go twice the price,” Middlebrook says with a laugh. “But NASCAR is the last thing we’d drop, because it’s still got the best returns for us. We’ve got a very good fit.
“We nibble around on road racing, but it’s hard to get the return on investment there. A lot of racing can become an ego-driven money pit, and we’re not interested in that.”

John Middlebrook would like Tony Stewart back in the Chevrolet camp in NASCAR
(Photo credit: GM Racing)

Middlebrook is more than just a big picture guy. He’s deep into the nuts-and-bolts, particular in this sport: “We’re very interested in seeing the results from the chassis dyno and the horsepower numbers.” Thursday’s runs showed Toyota with a sizeable horsepower edge over Chevrolet here.
And why did NASCAR give Toyota a new engine manifold for the Daytona 500 and not Chevrolet too? “That’s a good question,” Middlebrook says. “I’ll have to ask NASCAR.”

One hot-button issue being talked about in the NASCAR garage is the dominance of the super-teams, like the Rick Hendrick and Jack Roush operations. Should NASCAR move to break up those powerhouses, as some have suggested, and push for more smaller teams? Would GM support such a move? Should GM push for such a move?
Middlebrook says no: “I don’t think so at all. They’ve earned the position they have, through hard work and investment.
“You’d like to see the single-teams able to compete and survive, and NASCAR works hard for that, with its rules. But at the end of the day the people who really put the investment in are still going to be the most successful.”
But should Detroit car makers themselves help push for more balance in the garage? Isn’t it partly Detroit’s fault that its support of mega-teams is helping driving smaller teams from the playing field?
“We as a manufacturer share all our technical help with single-car teams as well as multi-car teams….we try to give equal support there,” Middlebrook insists.
“But frankly, we’re going to go where the leverage is, and we get a lot of leverage from the drivers – Earnhardt, Johnson, Gordon, Harvick.
“I learned a long time ago, and I’ve been with GM 40 years, that the manufacturer is second; it’s about the driver, and we have to roll with that, and use our brand the best we can.”
So what role did GM play in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s move to the Hendrick camp? “Our best interest was to keep Earnhardt in a Chevrolet, it didn’t matter where,” Middlebrook says.
On the other side of that, was keeping Earnhardt then more important than keeping Stewart?
“Well, yes, if I looked at fan bases and personality and return on our investment…if I had to lose one of them….” Middlebrook said, though quickly adding “But we really like Tony and we’re continuing to support him in his open-wheel.
“That move (to Toyota) wasn’t his call; it was Gibbs’.”

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Tony Stewart Finally Gets a Daytona Win, in Saturday’s 300

By Mike Mulhern

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
Tony Stewart is having a blast down here, even though it took him a while to get his first win of Speedweeks, in Saturday’s 300, the first NASCAR race under the Nationwide sponsorship.
“It was terrible, especially the outcome,” Stewart deadpanned after edging teammate Kyle Busch for the Toyota win.
“We just hate this when we have to win races and stuff.  Then you got to take pictures, all that.
“I hate taking a trophy home.  It’s miserable.
“It’s just a lot easier if you get wrecked in the first 20 laps, beat the traffic back, get a shower, kickback and watch the end of the race on TV.  It’s much more comfortable, not near as hot.  You don’t get sticky with all that stuff they pour on you in Victory Lane.
“Other than that, it’s pretty cool.”
The win was the second of Speedweeks for car owner Joe Gibbs, back in NASCAR after four years with the Redskins. Denny Hamlin beat teammate Stewart in Thursday’s 150 to give Toyota its first NASCAR Cup win.
Saturday Stewart had to beat back challenges from his newest teammate Busch and from Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the win.
“ It’s great having Joe back,” Stewart says. “He’s a great leader.  He’s a great motivator.  This week’s proof of that.  Everybody’s excited to have him back.
“We were hoping his football career would have ended a little different.  But we’re all excited to have him back here. 
“There’s just something about Joe.  When he’s in the shop, everybody’s demeanor is different, everybody’s more excited when he’s around.
“His biggest strength is knowing who to hire, and putting the right people for the right positions. And obviously Kyle Busch was his latest stroke of genius.
“He knows what Kyle’s capable of, and this was perfect proof of it.  Kyle ran a great race, he had probably the best handling car out there. I think we were real close on speed.
“He’s a great teammate.  He was awesome to work with.  There were a lot of times in the race late there when we could stay together.
“We would probably have a run that was big enough to go on by the guy in front of us, but we would just stay with each other and push each other and help try to clear ourselves from the rest of the pack to make sure we could get away.
“Having a teammate like him was awesome.”

Joe Gibbs, Stewart’s car owner, picked a great year to return to NASCAR
(Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images for NASCAR)

Daytona 500: Tony Stewart Vs. Dale Earnhardt Jr.?

By Mike Mulhern

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
More than 50 years of NASCAR history, legends and current stars, are here today to celebrate the 50th running of the Daytona 500, which over that span has become one of the world’s iconic sporting events. And, as usual during February Speedweeks, there is a good mix of controversy, intrigue and panic in the Cup garage, where 43 teams – with more than 25 plausible potential winners – have been warming up for some six weeks now for stock car racing’s Super Bowl, and the tour opener for NASCAR’s 60th season.
For much of Speedweeks the 500 winners from years past have been feted and paraded, building on the still amazing sense of history surrounding this event, and Daytona Beach itself, where it all really began even longer ago with those zany beach-course races, run half on asphalt – the road to quaint Ponce Inlet – and half on the hard-packed sand itself, now strewn with too many high-rise condos.
The weather has been unusually great (84 degrees and sunny Sunday), and some time Sunday evening a new winner will have the Harley Earl trophy, named for the man who, from the 1930s through the late 1950s, was Detroit’s master designer, making cars themselves artistically desirable.
The betting is for the race to come down to Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet men, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and newcomer Dale Earnhardt Jr., versus Joe Gibbs’ new-to-Toyota men, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, and newcomer Kyle Busch. Those two camps have been head-and-shoulders above the competition.
However: engine problems have plagued both camps (though each professes confidence in what they have for the 500), and tire problems have plagued many teams (though Goodyear and NASCAR insist things are well under control). Drivers say they’ll be scrambling for every position they can get in those first few laps after getting fresh tires, because the cars get very squirrelly very quickly after that; teams can run 40 laps (100 miles) on fuel before needing to stop, but after 25 laps the tires become a major issue for many, with excessive heat build-up and blistering, which can easily lead to blown tires, either the right-front or right-rear.
And then too this is the car-of-tomorrow debut at Daytona, and the new winged car has been awkward to drive and to set up. After last year’s fantastic finish, NASCAR execs may look foolish for changing the car. (But, given the TV ratings debate and questions about the crowd for next weekend’s key stop in Los Angeles, NASCAR bosses aren’t eager to hear any public criticism from these drivers and crews.)
The new car is physically larger than the long-established stocker, now obsoleted by NASCAR, and it has more horsepower than the restrictor plate engines used here for 20 years, as much as 75 horsepower more. That means the cars punch a larger hole in the air, and drivers have more oomph under their right foot.

Hollywood’s Amy Grant is just one of many celebrities at the Daytona 500
(Photo Credit: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images for NASCAR)

Tires? Ryan Newman says more teams are having tires blister than is being revealed. “I’m hoping the tire life gets better, because it’s not any fun having a tire that’s questionable,” Newman said.
Stewart: “You are probably more conscious that you have to make them last 40 laps. I don’t think we really thought about that last year. But this year you’re thinking about tire wear and abusing your tires early in the run. It makes you think about track position being more critical than ever…so you’re not in a situation where you’re wearing the tires out quicker.”
The closing rate has also been an issue – and any driver attempting to block a pass by mirror-driving will likely cause a major wreck.
Plus, NASCAR’s yellow-line out-of-bounds rule could play a factor too: drivers can’t push rivals into the grass any more.
But then drivers can put each other in the wall…which is why Stewart and arch-rival Kurt Busch are starting the season on NASCAR probation (though NASCAR has never clearly defined what probation means). Jeff Burton: “I’m not real sure what probation means.  It seems like there’s probation, and double-probation, and double-secret-probation. Drivers need to understand what’s acceptable and what’s not…and it’s a little gray right now.”
All that makes this 500 more difficult to handicap than usual…particularly if you throw drafting teamwork into the equation: teammates in this sport aren’t expected to play well with others.
Ford’s Matt Kenseth, perhaps that camp’s best pick for the upset, concedes the big story line here is easy enough to tag: “Is Dale Jr. going to win the Daytona 500 with his new team?
“From what I see on the track, Dale Jr. is real good, the Hendrick cars are good, and the Gibbs cars are unbelievably strong. Unless other people really get their stuff going, it’s going to be somebody out of those two groups…unless something weird happens.
“When you put Kyle Busch in one of them (Gibbs) cars—a guy who can make any car go fast—and when you get the three hooked up, that’s a really strong team. When we ran around Kyle in the 150, it was unbelievable how fast his car was.”
Earnhardt himself may be a bit underpowered, according to NASCAR’s dyno tests, but he seems supremely at ease with things right now. He’s already made it over the hump with his new team, opening with wins in the Shootout and the 150. And Junior at times seems almost philosophical about it all: “Daddy running here 20 times… and the first one I saw was the first race I was in,” Earnhardt says. “That’s really intimidating.
“Winning it is just potluck, mainly: You’ve got to have a fast car, but circumstances dictate who is going to be around at the end with a shot to win.”
Earnhardt Jr. didn’t get a silver spoon from Earnhardt Sr. during Junior’s early years in the sport, on the short-track trail, when it really wasn’t very clear if Junior was much of a driver at all: “Daddy always said he was going to make it as tough as he could on me when we first started but he wouldn’t let me starve.”

Can Toyota’s Tony Stewart beat Chevy’s Dale Earnhardt Jr.?
(Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

So is this a tortoise-versus-hare 500? Well, consider that Stewart’s Toyota engine Thursday tested some 30 horsepower stronger than Kevin Harvick’s Chevy motor, and some 15 horsepower stronger than Earnhardt’s. Chevrolet teams have won 15 of the last 19 500s, including the last five straight. But this one looks like it may well go to Toyota, a marque starting only its second season in the Cup series.
Still, the NASCAR history ditch is filled with “shoulda, coulda” winners who didn’t: 1979’s Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison; 1975’s David Pearson; 1976’s Richard Petty; 1981’s Bobby Allison; Dale Earnhardt Sr. in so many runs; Rusty Wallace too; and 2007’s Mark Martin, Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch.
And remember surprise winners, like 2002’s Ward Burton and 1990’s Derrike Cope.
“I remember the very first time I drove through the tunnel here…and how in awe,” Gordon says. “Of course the track is legendary, and has a lot of history, but you really have no idea…until you drive through that tunnel and see the steep banking and just an incredible race track.”
When this place first opened, a lot of NASCAR’s early stars just couldn’t handle it, couldn’t make the transition from bullring to flat-out, wide-open, never-lift superspeedway. 
Daytona International Speedway is not just another track. And drivers here have to raise their game to another level. Martin, for example, who has never won here, in his 25 years in the sport, drove the race of his life one year ago….only to lose by three feet to Harvick in the wild, crashing finish. In that last lap at least a dozen men had a good shot at the win.
“When you do go to victory lane for the first time, it’s very, very special,” Gordon says. “I feel like the third time (2005) was even more special than the first, because I have a greater appreciation today not for just the sport and the history but just how competitive and how hard it is to win this race.”
Johnson, the 2006 winner, agrees: “Growing up in Southern California and racing off-road, NASCAR was worlds-away. To win the Daytona 500, I never thought it was attainable.  To be able to experience it it’s impossible to put it into words. There’s nothing like it.”
Johnson put crew chief Chad Knaus’ car on the pole for Sunday’s 3:30 p.m. start, side by side with Toyota’s Michael Waltrip, a two-time 500 winner, coming back from a 2007 season that was impossibly tumultuous.
Johnson and Knaus, during their six years with Hendrick, have shown the most consistently strong team on the tour, a team that takes big gambles and is unusually successful with them. And this year they’re going for a third straight NASCAR championship.
“Yeah, there’s pressure,” Gordon says of his teammates. “But they’re so together. They’re so on top of their game. And Hendrick Motorsports is on top of its game, whole better than we’ve ever been. 
“The only thing that can throw a kink in there is this new car.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is focused and ready for the Daytona 500, but does he have enough motor to beat Toyota?
(Photo credit: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Well, that and the Dale Earnhardt Jr. factor. Earnhardt is coming back from two bad years, and he’s moved to the Hendrick camp, where he’s opened with wins in the Shootout here and Thursday’s 150. So far Earnhardt has upstaged his teammates, and how that plays out……
The other Dale – Jarrett – is also a big story here, because he’s a three-time 500 winner and running in his last Daytona. The 1999 tour champ will hang it up in a couple of weeks and turn TV announcer. Certainly a Jarrett victory would be a great sentimental story…though his last few years haven’t been all that good.
Jeff Burton: “I can appreciate how good he feels about getting in the 500, with all the pressure. That pressure has been on him for a long time, for 10 or 11 months, not just this week. And those things have a way of snowballing.
“To get into the biggest show of the year, that’s pretty important, and I’m glad for him. Dale Jarrett has been an incredible figure for our sport. He’s done good things on the track and off.”
With all the focus on Gibbs’ Toyotas, Jarrett, Waltrip and teammate David Reutimann have been almost lost in the rush. But all three could make some waves today.
“I haven’t been just waiting for the 2008 season to start, I’ve been preparing for it,” Waltrip says firmly. “I have been trying to make the next day better.
“Everything happens for a reason. I am very proud of where I am today. I don’t focus on ‘what if?’ I did what I thought I needed to do, and I am okay with everything that happened last year…especially if it allows us to be more successful in 2008. I believe we will be. So I have no regrets.”
However over the in the Jack Roush and Richard Childress camps, things aren’t quite so bright. 
Harvick brought home the bacon for car owner Childress last spring, but this time around Childress’ cars don’t seem to have much power. Burton, Harvick’s teammate, hopes smarts mean more than sheer speed: “Last year’s race was pretty unique. The last 40 laps were just incredible, and had as much to do with surviving as anything. 
“The only way to figure out what you’ve got is run in the front and show people you can run fast, and they’ll go with you when it’s time to go.  It worked out last year for Kevin and us. We finished third and I’m not sure we ever led a lap. And Mark (Martin) too – I’m not sure we ever saw him until 20 or 30 to go.”
With unseasonably hot temperatures expected Sunday afternoon, drivers expect to slip and slide even more: “This track gets slick and real slimy,” Burton says. “These cars don’t handle all that great, and the challenge is only going to get bigger.
“The strategy is going to be different (from 2007), the opportunity to pass is different.  We saw two races (the 150s) that had a two-lap shootout at the end. In one, the front two cars (Earnhardt and Dodge’s Reed Sorenson) just drove off from the others…and in the other the guy leading the race (Stewart) didn’t win it.”
Add some wild cards, like Indy-stars but NASCAR rookies Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish Jr., and things get even more tricky: “What I’m learning is that it gets interesting in the draft,” Franchitti, now in a backup, says with a grin. “When the car starts sliding around, it’s a handful.”
Jamie McMurray has already wiped out two Roush 500 Fords: “With the car-of-tomorrow, they have to build the cars so light it doesn’t take much of a hit to pretty much junk one.”
Teammate David Ragan: “The tires wear out pretty fast, so I think you’ll see single-file racing late in the run. But with new tires these things drive like a dream. I think the racing will be good for a few laps and then we’ll ride a little bit.”
And the pressure is even more severe in the Doug Yates part of the Ford camp, because he’s still looking for two full-time team sponsors. So Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland need to make something happen quick.
Kvapil: “We’ve got to work on a setup that doesn’t just blow through the tires. It seems 10 laps into the run it’s sliding all over the place and you’re just barely hanging on.”
Gilliland agrees: “We’ve been real concerned about tires. That put us out of the Shootout, and we had a little bit of tire trouble in the 150. A lot of people are having tire trouble.”