Daytona 24 could provide plenty of drama

I can't wait to see what this column looks like in its first appearance under the Appeal's new format. I hope they retouched my picture to take a few years off!

As you sit down with your first cup of coffee to read this, the Rolex Daytona 24 will be in its final hours. Earlier this week 2004 Daytona Prototype co-champion Scott Pruett captured the pole position for the second year in a row (whatever pole is worth in a 24 hour endurance contest). Pruett, one of the most versatile active drivers in Motorsports, has wins in Trans-Am, Champ Cars, Winston Cup (as it was then), and a variety of high-powered sports cars.

Pruett is driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, an organization whose resume is as varied as Pruett's. Ganassi's three-car Daytona team has three of the top five starting positions in a field that is literally a who's who of drivers. There are NASCAR, CART, and IRL stars as well as some Formula 1 and LeMans veterans in a variety of Prototype and GT machinery. By this time of day on Sunday morning many of them will have fallen by the wayside, as this race is noted for its high rate of attrition.

I'll be watching to see if there is a repeat of last year's drama, when Tony Stewart amazed everybody with a virtuoso driving display in a severely wounded race car until the machinery let him down just short of the checkered flag. SPEED Channel's coverage of this race is nothing short of miraculous, and I advise one and all to catch as much of it as you can. It will all be over well before Super Bowl kickoff, I promise.

Last week NASCAR teams tested at Las Vegas and at California Speedway in Fontana. This was a much more meaningful test than the earlier Daytona runs, because the car configuration is so different for the restrictor plate races (Daytona and Talladega) than for the rest of the tracks the series runs on. Prior to the test there had been a lot of trepidation that the 2005 aero and tire rule changes would have adverse effects on the Cup cars' handling. As it turned out, most of the fears were groundless.

Veteran Mark Martin weighed in at Las Vegas, saying, "My car feels just like it did a year ago."

Jeff Gordon said, "We expected the cars to be a lot looser, so we came here really tight. I'm pretty happy so far."

Changes for 2005 include a softer compound for the mandated Goodyear tires and a rear spoiler height reduction of a full inch, to 4.5 inches on all non-restrictor-plate tracks. Gee, maybe the softer tires and the shorter spoiler cancelled each other out?

Sixty teams, split between Busch and Nextel Cup, next tested in high winds at California Speedway. Both Bobby Labonte and Michael Waltrip pronounced the tests a success and said that they had learned a lot about the new car configurations, even though Bobby suffered a brush with the wall.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. lost an engine during the California runs, and Jeff Burton also had a wall-banging incident. No official times were kept during the Las Vegas and California tests, so there is no early indication of which teams will be strong out of the chute and which may have some catching up to do.

As mentioned here earlier Mo Nunn's has closed up shop and will not contest the IRL championship this year. Nunn has sold his Dallara chassis to Ron Hemelgarn, one of the original IRL car owners who is re-entering the series for 2005. Although Nunn is out of the series, he is still considering a run at the Indy 500.

He's still got a couple of G-Force chassis, and is talking with Tomas Scheckter, Patrick Carpentier, and Alex Barron about a possible Indy effort if sponsorship materializes. There has even been some talk of Kenny Brack driving for Nunn in a last-ever 500 for both owner and driver. Come the month of May, I've got a feeling that Tony George's big race will need all the entries it can muster if they're going to get close to the traditional 33-car field.