NASCAR Pre-Season Thunder Testing Begins At Daytona

NASCAR began its Sprint Cup pre-season testing at Daytona International Speedway in preparation for the Daytona 500 upcoming the final weekend of February. 

For the most part, on the first day, most of the drivers refrained from drafting, working on setups to their stock cars with a new, smaller spoiler, smaller radiator and fuel injection. 

Without communication between drivers attempting to hook up and draft, "It's going to be a lot more difficult," said Kyle Busch, driver of the No.18 M&M's Toyota Camry from Joe Gibbs Racing. "There's some different elements; the drivers really have to work hard trying to make sure that you stay connected and that you can get air into the intake for the radiator." 

Teammate Joey Logano, in the No. 20 Home Depot/Dollar General Camry said, "Man, we were pushing like crazy. We're just working with what we need to do to try to be able to do it again with the rules changes. It's made it super hard. It works good in practice right now, but when we get a bunch of cars around us in a racing situation, it's probably not going to work as good," he remarked.

Howard Comstock from Dodge Motorsports engineering still isn't sure how fast his cars will be in qualifying trim. "We really haven't spent a lot of time there yet, but in race trim the two Dodge cars are awesome. We traded top speed with the Gibbs cars all day, but when it was our two cars versus their two cars, we were just a little bit faster," he admitted.

The biggest challenge for Comstock--and all the engineers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage is the cooling system. "Maintaining a safe engine temperature for 500 miles is going to be a big job. When you run by yourself," Comstock said, "you can get plenty of air to the radiator; if you want to go fast in the two-car tandem it's going to be a challenge.  Drivers have to really watch what their engines are doing for 500 miles or you're going to risk a major engine failure."

In his first day as a Penske Racing driver, AJ Allmendinger was happy with the speed of his No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger. "It's fast. You can really feel the speed of the car; it's a lot faster. The cars heat up quicker," he admitted. "All these smart engineers are going to go back and figure out how to keep them cooler before we head back up for the [Daytona] 500. There's nothing major that stands out, but you can definitely feel the speed when you're closing in on cars in front of you. You get light and get loose and that's where you need a good relationship with your teammate."

Enjoying the new Best Buy sponsorship on his No. 17 Ford, Matt Kenseth spoke about changes to his car from last year. "Our speeds are way up compared to what we are used to doing the let couple of years. I am interested to see if they try to race this restrictor plate I think we will be going really fast. I've seen 195 on the straightaway today by myself and if you get locked together, you probably get another 10 miles per hour.

"I like the idea they have come up with as far as the smaller spoiler and going faster and trying to make the cars handle," Kenseth continued, "because it is going to be hard to make them no handle here because of the new pavement. If you can make them not handle, it is going to be harder to push someone around the track."

Kenseth lost a $2,500 bet to Dale Earnhardt Jr, who held a 1970s-themed New Years Eve party attended by Kenseth. The Wisconsin-bred driver had a beard at that point and Earnhardt bet him it would be gone by the time they arrived at Daytona Beach for the test.  It was, but Kenseth has yet to pay up.

"Remind Matt he owes me $2500 because he had a beard that night and I bet him he couldn't keep it through the test. I told him to go to the bank, but maybe he forgot. I want my $2,500," Earnhardt Jr stated.

The second generation star and perennial most popular driver likes the speed he's been running. "The cars were really, really slow by themselves the last couple years at Daytona and Talladega. Qualfiying in the mid-180 range is just way too slow. I think the changes NASCAR made are really good. I can feel that I'm going around the corner faster than I have been the last couple years, which is good."

Danica Patrick made her debut in the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet, working with new crew chief Greg Zipadelli. "Today is just run on our own and see how fast we can get the car to go. Tomorrow we'll work on bump drafting," she said.  

Team owner and reigning Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart isn't sure how the rules changes will affect him yet, because he, too, has been practicing solo. "I don't know if anybody is even planning on trying to do any two-car pack running today. I think you'll see some of that tomorrow."

Practice for the Sprint Cup teams and drivers continues Friday throughout the day at Daytona International Speedway. NASCAR's Robin Pembertson is expecting the drivers to work in a big draft to see how the changes affect their handling. "To me," said Kasey Kahne, driver of the No. 5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet, "if the draft is fast enough and everybody can run together and you don't have to be pushing each other, then when you do have to change from one car to the other because your engine gets hot, you're going to lose way more than you gain, depending on how close the draft is to the two-car speed.

"So until we do that, it's just kind of an unknown of how fast that draft will be.  You have to have 20 to 30 cars in that draft to see where it'll really stand up, stack up against maybe the tandem or a couple cars in line tandeming together," Kahne explained.  "I think tomorrow we'll learn more about it and Saturday, as well."