Race fans, start your remotes! Yes, NASCAR's first race of the year, the non-points Shootout, starts the season on FOX at 5 p.m. today.
The field is huge this year, with 33 drivers eligible versus 24 the past two seasons. Last year's Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne will be starting his first Shootout, as will Marcos Ambrose and Brad Keselowski. Only five times in the race's 33-year history has a rookie won, but Bayne proved last year that he knows how to get it done at Daytona.
Some other interesting facts about the Shootout:
• Kurt Busch was the only Dodge driver in the field when he scored the manufacturer's first Shootout win. This year there will be two Dodges in the field, driven by Keselowski and A.J. Allmendinger.
• The 2011 Shootout saw 38 lead changes, a record. However, that was with the two-car draft, which may not be as effective tonight due to NASCAR's recent technical changes.
• Since the event began in 1979, more than $17,900,000 has been awarded. Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. are tied for the biggest single-race payday at $215,000. Stewart is the leader in Shootout paydays, with over a million dollars in winnings.
• Mark Martin holds the record for consecutive Shootout appearances at 20. Jeff Gordon has competed in 19 straight.
• Twelve of the drivers eligible for this year's race have won at least one Shootout.
• The winner led only one lap (the last one) in seven of the 33 previous Shootouts. The most recent was Kevin Harvick in 2009, but then he makes a habit of doing that in Cup points races as well.
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On Sunday, SPEED will televise pole qualifying for next Sunday's Daytona 500. Daytona has a unique qualifying system in which only the top two qualifiers are locked into their positions for the race.
All the rest must run one of the 150-mile "Duel at Daytona" races on Thursday to determine their starting position. Of course, the top 35 in 2011 owner points are locked into the field, which means that eight spots are left for the rest of the competitors. This brings up the subject of point swapping again. Mark Martin, who will drive a partial schedule in the No. 55 for Michael Waltrip Racing, was not locked into the field. But in a deal worthy of Congress, the points for FAS Lane Racing's No. 32 car, which finished 34th in owner points in 2011, were transferred to the No. 55. This came about through a partnership between MWR and Bill Jenkins, a minority owner in FAS Lane Racing. There was much discussion concerning point swapping a few years back when it was rampant, but apparently this deal passed the smell test with NASCAR.
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A familiar face will be back on the tube for 2012, as Ray Evernham has rejoined ESPN as a commentator on NASCAR Now and Sports Center. He also will do NASCAR Countdown for the Nationwide races and for the Sprint Cup races when ESPN/ABC take over those broadcasts later this year. Evernham sat in on a conference call on Wednesday to answer a wide range of questions about his hiatus while he was settling in at Hendrick Performance to his take on the driver/team/crew chief changes for 2012. He weighed in on the new fuel injection system, personalities, his picks to watch this season (Kasey Kahne and A.J. Allmendinger were high on his list), and a variety of other topics. He will bring a lot of knowledge and opinion to the broadcasts this year, and I for one look forward to it.
