NASCAR ready for whole new world in California

FONTANA, California — Daytona is over. Let the real season begin.

That’s been the prevailing theme this week as the NASCAR Sprint Cup series moves to Southern California for Sunday’s Auto Club 500.

“I think the only thing you can take out of Daytona is momentum and points,” three-time Auto Club Speedway winner Jeff Gordon said.

The season-opening Daytona 500 is NASCAR’s Super Bowl. But it’s also one of only four Cup races run each season with restricted engines. The combination of less horsepower and the big tracks at Daytona and Talladega makes the events unique.

Cup teams prepare the entire winter for Daytona, building special cars with special engines.

Then, suddenly, it’s on to a whole new world — the 2-mile oval at Auto Club Speedway and the 1.5-mile tracks at Las Vegas and Atlanta the next two weeks. Those tracks are the models for most of the venues on the 36-race Cup schedule, so Sunday’s race should begin to answer some questions.

“This is the first time all year that we get to go out and run and we’re not depending on everybody else around us,” two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart explained. “I do feel like this is really the first true test of where everybody is at, and a truer read to the season than just Daytona.

“You get big groups of wrecks (at Daytona) that you can get caught up in easily, and the draft plays such a big role, where here, it’s more about individual performances, where who paired up with who and got going.”

Adding to the intrigue coming to Fontana is the testing ban that NASCAR imposed over the winter to help the team’s bottom lines during the economic crunch.

That gave drivers and crew members some unexpected free time over the winter, but it also raised even more questions for the teams.

“The whole garage is anxious about it,” longtime Cup star Jeff Burton said. “If they’re not, they’re foolish.

“You have no idea what you have until this race is over,” he said Friday after the opening practice session. “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. We haven’t done that yet.”

Three-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and 2008 runner-up Carl Edwards, the drivers expected by many to vie for this year’s title, got off to so-so starts at Daytona.

Edwards was never really a contender and wound up 18th, while Johnson battled a tire problem throughout the race and finished 31st.

“Last Week did not end up the way we wanted, but it was cool that Ford was in Victory Lane,” said Edwards, who saw Roush Fenway Racing teammate Matt Kenseth win.

But Edwards, the defending champion in this race and one of four straight Roush Fenway winners in this event, has finished worse than sixth in Fontana only once in nine starts.

“This place is a lot of fun for me,” said Edwards, who went on to win nine races last year. “I love racing here. … We were really good in practice, and this was the start of a really great season last year. So, hopefully, we can have a good run here and get started the same way.”

Johnson, like Hendrick Motorsports teammate Gordon, a three-time winner in Fontana, was also looking forward to finding out just where he and his No. 48 Chevrolet team stand.

“Fortunately, there are only two races in Daytona, four plate races in general, and we’re leaving there and coming to a great racetrack for us,” Johnson said. “In the spring it seems like we’re good for a top-two finish, and then in the fall race (here) we’ve been able to win a bunch lately. So I’m very excited about the race and getting to a downforce, fast racetrack and see where we’re at.

“There are so many questions about who is going to be fast and who is going to be the favorite. Has testing affected the competition or not? Over the next few weeks we’ll get a good indication of that and the teams and players and what testing has done and all that good stuff. I’m excited for it.”

He should be.

Johnson finished third to two-time California winner Matt Kenseth at this race in 2007, was runner-up to Edwards last year and has also won the last two Labor Day Weekend events here.

So, without offseason testing, who are the drivers to beat Sunday and in the coming weeks?

“I really think you have to go back to the conclusion of last season and look at the way everybody was running on certain types of tracks and start there,” Johnson said.

If he’s right, Johnson and Edwards will be hard to beat.