Sunday’s Auto Club 500 could be a much truer test of which teams are strong and which ones are struggling than Daytona was. At least that’s the perception of many of the racers....
“I think the season really starts here,” said 2008 Sprint Cup runner-up Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusion.
(Photo: LAT Photographic)
NASCAR’s season annually opens up with the traditional pomp and circumstance at Daytona Speedweeks, but this weekend’s triple-header at Auto Club Speedway might be a better barometer of what to actually expect in 2009.
Sunday’s Auto Club 500 begins the first of a three-race stretch of 1.5-2-mile intermediate tracks for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and as such could be a much truer test of which teams are strong and which ones are struggling than Daytona was. At least that’s the perception of many of the racers at the 2-mile speedway this weekend, especially with NASCAR banning off-season testing.
“I think the season really starts here,” said 2008 Sprint Cup runner-up Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusion. “Daytona is such a huge event and it’s a different type of racing than we’re going to race the rest of the season, and it kind of stands alone, literally and figuratively. I really feel like this is where you’re going to see how strong your pit crew is, how good your relationship is with your crew chief, and if the engineering you’ve been working on work, and the things that work here are going to apply at a lot of race tracks. So, yeah, everyone’s playing close attention. We’re racing now. We’re going to be doing the same thing week after week for 34 or 35 more weeks.”
Jeff Burton, who drives the No. 31 Chevrolet Impala SS for Richard Childress Racing, said Friday that tension is high among the teams, given that they haven’t been able to test this winter as they have in years past. “The whole garage is anxious about it,” said Burton, who earlier in the week appeared in an episode of General Hospital. “If they’re not, they’re foolish. You have no idea what you have until this race is over. Even today — you could run terrible today and run well on Sunday. You could run great today and run terrible on Sunday. You don’t know where you stack up against your competition until you get to compare yourself against your competition.”
