DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Jimmie Johnson, atop the Daytona 500 testing board again, is taking aim at a third straight Cup championship, and if the first week of the new season is any indication, teammate Jeff Gordon may again be his toughest rival.
Or — don’t laugh — will it be a Toyota?
Most crew chiefs and drivers cautioned not to read too much into testing speeds for next month’s season-opener, because handling in the draft, tire wear, and engine-air intake setups with these new cars would be much more important in the 500 itself.
Nevertheless some trends appear clear: Johnson and Gordon, and perhaps teammate Casey Mears (runner-up here to Johnson in 2006), are fast. And Toyotas are fast as well, led by Jacques Villeneuve.
For Toyota teams, a change in fortunes can’t come soon enough, after a miserable 2007.
The week’s biggest NASCAR headlines may actually have been made in Washington, where Joe Gibbs announced he is stepping down as coach of the Redskins, which would give him more time with his NASCAR teams. That may be good news for Toyota, because Gibbs’ three drivers, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, are all championship material but also a bit volatile.
In fact, Toyota teams here are making quite an impression, with nine of the 15-fastest cars in Tuesday’s single-car runs.
Johnson’s 184.763 mph solo run was just a tick quicker than Villeneuve’s. Villeneuve, the 1997 Formula One champion, qualified sixth at Talladega last fall, and so far he has upstaged fellow F1 racer Juan Pablo Montoya here.
If 2007 was all but a disaster for Toyota, the company’s second season on the Cup tour could be much better, with the addition of the Gibbs’ threesome.
Toyota’s Lee White is certainly optimistic. White, the company’s field boss says that Toyota’s engines are now strong enough to win, as last fall’s NASCAR chassis dyno tests showed: “I saw the chassis dyno numbers from NASCAR after Texas, and our numbers then were right on the mark, and they’re better now.
“Don’t forget these aren’t Daytona ‘plate’ motors any more. The old traditional plate motor is history. This engine was first raced at Talladega last fall, an open-spec engine, just like something you would race at Michigan.
“Six months before Talladega we saw that as an opportunity, and we had 15 people working just on that engine. And we were on the pole at Talladega, and we had six of the top eight qualifiers. And four of our guys all ran in the top 10 all day, and if they’d gotten in the right line any one of them could have won that race.
“So I’m optimistic we can compete for the Daytona 500 pole, and to win one, if not both of the 150s (qualifying races), and have a couple of guys contending to win the 500.”
White said that the addition of the Gibbs operation “has completely changed the outlook and focus for us as a company.
The most obvious new Toyota engineering project is putting Gibbs’ Ronnie Crooks, one of the sport’s top chassis specialists, in charge of helping the three other Toyota operations, something rather unusual. Crooks has been all over the garage this week.
“That was J. D. Gibbs’ idea,” White said. “I give J. D. (Joe’s son) all the credit. Something like that is unusual at the Cup level … and I would have to say we were rather unsuccessful in getting our teams to share in projects. So the Gibbs guys are leading by example.”
White said that Toyota has four engineers in Gibbs’ engine shop right now, working with engine boss Mark Cronquist “to get them over the hump.
“We are supplementing their parts’ acquisition, so they can spend more time actually developing the engine. Hopefully, Michael Waltrip Racing and Red Bull will be running engines assembled from the same components as Mark’s.
“The task is to add our 220-plus engineering staff to theirs, so we can not only raise our game but raise their game. I’ll let you know how that works out by July.
“The Hendrick guys set the bar pretty high last year. I can’t wait until next week here to see how Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. runs in the Hendrick stuff.”
Prerssure on Montoya: Chip Ganassi was careful to couch expectations on Juan Pablo Montoya last season, when the former Formula One star began his first full year in NASCAR.
Now that the rookie stripe is off Montoya’s bumper, the car owner is ready for results.
Ganassi didn’t back down Wednesday from the “Chase or bust” declaration he made late last season, insisting he expects the Colombian driver to compete for the Sprint Cup championship this year.
“It’s Chase or bust, and in a macro-sense I mean it,” Ganassi said. “Yes, it’s a lot of pressure, but that’s what this business is about. We’re not in the Wizard of Oz, you know.”
It’s a stark contrast from what Ganassi preached this time last year, when he cautioned observers not to expect miracles from Montoya. The switch from sleek, sophisticated F1 cars to the boxy, bulky stock cars was going to be a wild transition, and he insisted Montoya’s unique talent level wouldn’t insulate him from frequent struggles.
So the car owner tempered expectations at every turn, even after Montoya delivered the winning car in the prestigious Rolex 24 sports car race. His performance in that event last January showed that he was getting the hang of different cars, and led many to believe Montoya might race out of the gates in NASCAR.
And in a sense he did, scoring his first NASCAR victory a little over a month into the season when he won a Busch race on the road course in Mexico City.
The bumps soon followed, though, and Montoya suffered through an eight-week stretch in which he failed to finish higher than 20th. When he turned it around, he scored his first Cup win on the road course at Sonoma.
It didn’t turn his season entirely around, but he weathered every twist and turn — including a minor shoving match with Kevin Harvick — to finish 20th in the points and earn Rookie of the Year honors.
Now Ganassi is demanding more out of the former Indianapolis 500 champion, but he doesn’t think his raised expectations will faze Montoya.
“This is not putting pressure on him, this kind of stuff doesn’t even get his attention,” Ganassi said. “Saying ‘Chase or bust’ isn’t going to speed him up or slow him down. This isn’t his first goat roping.”
Ganassi is right in his assessment of Montoya, who came to NASCAR with a reputation as a brash and aggressive driver. He’s got high hopes for this season, but won’t allow his No. 42 team to get ahead of itself.
“Do we think we can get in the Chase? Yeah. Do we think we can have a chance at winning a race on an oval? Yeah. Do we think we can win again on a road course? Probably,” he said. “But there are so many things that can happen. Somebody can have better fuel mileage than you, so they win on a road course.
“Or, you come into the pits, and it’s the wrong call. Any given day, there are four to five guys who can win the race.”
It sometimes confounded Montoya, who was used to driving superior equipment that could challenge for wins weekly. Experiencing the ups and downs during a 36-race season, when the car can be competitive one week and then never get close to the front the next, was frustrating.
“It’s amazing that you can actually go to a race weekend, qualify 35th, and you can run 30th all day and be two laps down and not even know what’s hit you,” he said. “And you go to the next week thinking, we suck, and you finish third. What did we do different? You look at it, and you didn’t do anything different.
“It’s just, the car was faster, you were more comfortable, and the setup was better.”
It will be up to crew chief Donnie Wingo to lead Montoya to more good days than bad this season. His Daytona test this week was decent, but Montoya was clocked middle of the pack in almost every session.
But Wingo thinks that at the end of the 26-race “regular season,” there’s no reason his team won’t be in contention to make the Chase for the championship. After all, he almost got Jamie McMurray into the Chase twice when McMurray drove the No. 42.
“I think making the Chase is something we can definitely do. We’ve been so close as a team over the last four years. We were within like 15 points two times,” Wingo said. “It’s frustrating when you get that close. I think this year we can do it. I think we’ve got the tools, I think we definitely have the driver, I think we have the team to do it.”
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