Toyota scrambling to fix motor problems

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The president of Toyota Racing Development said he was embarrassed by a rash of engine problems that forced four motor changes at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Lee White said the engine issue, which first popped up last week at California, appeared to be related to lubricants and coolings in the motors that TRD builds at its Costa Mesa, Calif., factory. The motors for Brian Vickers, Scott Speed, David Reutimann and Marcos Ambrose all had to be pulled after qualifying Friday. Vickers also had to switch motors last week after winning the pole in California, as did Michael Waltrip.

Kyle Busch, the pole-winner for this Sunday's race, also changed a Toyota motor on Friday, but his was built by Joe Gibbs Racing and the issue was unrelated to the TRD problems.

White said TRD thought the issue was resolved after California, and was bothered that changes the company made didn't work.

"We thought (the change) was the right direction," White said. "I'm disturbed to say that the right direction apparently was the wrong direction. We came here and thought we had a handle on it. We didn't. We made it worse."

TRD is using different lubricants and coatings on the motors now in place for Sunday, and five additional engines were sent from Costa Mesa to be on hand in case additional switches were needed after Saturday's practice session. All the TRD motors appeared to be free of the problem following a post-practice inspection late Saturday afternoon.

The problem appears within the first 75 miles of use, and once an engine passes that mark, it is good for the remainder of the race.

"We're going to use a heavier lubrication and not try to squeeze every ounce of horsepower out of them," said White, who estimated the difference will be between four and five horsepower.

"Four or five horsepower is not insignificant in this league. No driver in the world would give it up willingly. But every team ... needs to get to the end. Our goal is to give them the best shot."

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SAFER RACE: Jeff Gordon feels secure on the track at Las Vegas a year after one of the worst wrecks of his career.

Gordon spun coming out of Turn 2 in last year's race and slammed into the inside retaining wall. The hit, at a portion of the track where energy-absorbing barriers had not been installed, was so hard it knocked the radiator out of his car.

The four-time series champion was extremely critical of the track after the accident, and speedway officials responded by installing SAFER barriers around the 1.5-mile facility.

"I'm confident in Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and in the comments that were made last year and the conversations I had with them last year and this year of what their plans were," he said. "I feel good about what they've done and seeing it at a slower pace without hitting it."

Gordon said he's never seen footage of the accident.

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UNDER THE WEATHER: Jamie McMurray had the fastest Ford in Saturday's final practice session, but a bout with the flu prevented him from feeling good about his chances at a win.

McMurray, seventh fastest overall, headed to the infield care center after practice to ask for new medication.

"The medicine that I've got right now is not really working," said McMurray, who fell ill Tuesday night. "You think you'd be better by now and I'm not, so I'm going to see if they'll give me something else to help with my chest. My eyeballs are the biggest issue right now. There's a lot of pressure on them and when the car loads up in the corner it really hurts my eyes."

McMurray was also ill the week of the season-opening Daytona 500, as were several other drivers.

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MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO: Minutes before the start of the final Sprint Cup Series practice, several of the top drivers in NASCAR could be seen running through the garage.

Jeff Burton led Brian Vickers, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards as they weaved in and out of groups of fans trying to get to their cars.

The drivers had just left the pre-race meeting for the Nationwide Series race, when Burton broke into a trot. The rest then followed him, even though they all made it to their garage stalls with plenty of time to spare before the start of practice.

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FAST CARS: Jimmie Johnson, a three-time winner at Las Vegas, was the fastest driver in the final practice Saturday.

He led teammate Jeff Gordon, Sam Hornish Jr., Kurt Busch, and teammate Mark Martin. Defending race winner Carl Edwards was ninth fastest.

The only issue Saturday was minor, when rookie Joey Logano lightly tapped the wall following a spin.


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Busch not ruling out Formula One opportunities

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Formula One was never on Kyle Busch's radar as he chased his dream of being a NASCAR superstar.

That doesn't mean he wouldn't consider a legitimate opportunity to join the globe-hopping series.

"I toss the idea around," he said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "It's definitely something I wouldn't shoot down, but I don't think it's the right time yet in my career and where I'm at."

Busch is in his second season with Joe Gibbs Racing, where he's emerged as one of NASCAR's most talented drivers. It has landed him on Peter Windsor's wish list of potential drivers for a planned U.S.-based Formula One team.

Windsor, one of two businessmen behind the effort to field USF1 in 2010, mentioned Busch's name earlier this week as an American driver the team would like to hire. Busch, who is signed with JGR through 2010, said he's not been contacted by the team.

Should they call -- or any other F1 team-- he'd be willing to someday listen.

"It's something that I'd love to give a shot at one day," he said. "It was never on my radar. Open-wheel stuff wasn't, but it's something that I wouldn't mind trying. I wouldn't mind trying IndyCars and running the Indianapolis 500 or Formula One. It's not quite the time for me to do that yet.

"If I could win a championships here in the next two or three years, then I wouldn't mind going over there and doing that, trying it for a few years and coming back. I think I'd still be young enough that if I could win a championship by 25, go run Formula One for a few years, be back by 28. I still have plenty of time left to run in NASCAR."

Juan Pablo Montoya made the move from Formula One to NASCAR, and said Busch's lack of experience in open-wheel cars would make a potential move difficult.

"He grew driving these things, and open wheel is very different," Montoya said. "He would have a very hard transition. He runs very well on the ovals. He does a very good job on the road courses. But it is a different car, it is a different animal."

Busch had an opportunity to drive an F1 car last December through Toyota, but had to pass on the demonstration because of a scheduling conflict with NASCAR's Nationwide Series awards ceremony.

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BIFFLE'S BETTER MOOD: Greg Biffle was extremely hard on himself last week after running over an air hose during a late pit stop at California, a mistake he believed cost him a chance at the victory.

"I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight. I'm just sick to my stomach. It almost brings tears to my eyes to know that I let the guys down like I did," he said after his fourth-place finish.

With a fresh start in front of him this weekend at Las Vegas, Biffle said Friday he probably went overboard in beating himself up about the gaffe.

"I think when you first get out of the car, you're really upset about it," he said. "But probably after Tuesday, I quit thinking about it. I certainly exaggerated what my feeling were. We had a really good car, and it's tough when you have to go home not winning a race like that."

Biffle was third here in 2008, and likes his chances because he's more comfortable on the track since it was resurfaced in 2006.

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FAN FORUMS: Speedway Motorsports Inc. plans to host fan forums at all 13 of its Sprint Cup races this season in an effort to bring NASCAR's drivers closer to their supporters.

The "PRN Up To Speed" program will feature NASCAR drivers fielding questions from the Performance Racing Network's on-air personalities in an emcee question-and-answer format. They'll be held on the Speed TV's stage and will be in a free access area.

"This might be the biggest no-brainer that we've ever put into motion," said Marcus Smith, president and chief operating officer of SMI. "We've always operated with a fans first philosophy and fans love to see and hear from their favorite drivers. So, we're inviting the drivers, owners and other racing personalities to come out during our race weekends and interact with the fans. Giving our fans even more for their dollar is something we strive for every year."

The new event will debut Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Richard Childress will be the first guests.


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Busch brothers top qualifying at home track

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- It was brotherly love, briefly, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch became the first brothers since 2000 to sweep the front row in qualifying for a NASCAR race, but Kyle Busch's blown motor will prevent the Las Vegas drivers from starting next to each other at their home track.

Kyle Busch blew a motor in his Toyota during Friday's practice session, changed the engine, then ran a pole-winning lap of 185.995 mph to knock his big brother off the pole. Kurt Busch ran a lap at 185.707 mph.

But under NASCAR rules, Kyle Busch will have to drop to the back of the field at the start of Sunday's race. Third-place qualifier Jimmie Johnson will slide onto the front row next to Kurt Busch during the warm-up laps.

Kyle Busch wasn't worried about having to drive to the front.

"Unfortunately for myself, I won't be in the cool photo next to my brother at the drop of the green flag," said Kyle Busch, who celebrated the pole-winning run by crashing a Victory Lane wedding ceremony between race fans and stepping in as the best man.

The 1-2 qualifying effort marked the first time brothers have swept the front row since Rusty and Kenny Wallace at Martinsville in 2000. Bobby and Terry Labonte also took the top two starts at the 1998 Daytona 500.

The motor change spoiled what would have undoubtedly been an intense fight to lead the first lap, so Kurt Busch wasn't bothered that Kyle will fall to the back of the field.

"It would have been great to go after it and see who would leave the first lap, but you can't get caught up in all that," Kurt Busch said.

David Reutimann and Marcos Ambrose qualified fourth and fifth, but also had to change their motors after their laps and will drop to the back of the field. Brian Vickers, who won the pole last week at California but had to forfeit it because of an engine change, and his teammate Scott Speed also switched motors Friday.

In all, five Toyota teams switched motors Friday.

"I don't have any idea," Busch said of the rash of motor problems. Kyle Busch's motor is built by Joe Gibbs Racing, but the others all came from Toyota's factory in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Ryan Newman qualified sixth and was followed by Kasey Kahne, Mark Martin, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart.

A total of 51 drivers entered the race, meaning 16 drivers were vying for the eight available spots in the field. Among those to make the race AJ Allmendinger -- a year after he missed the event for Red Bull Racing and was temporarily pulled from his ride the next week, Brad Keselowski and Regan Smith, last year's rookie of the year.

Missing the field was Jeremy Mayfield and Scott Riggs, who both raced their way into the Daytona 500 three weeks ago, as well as Travis Kvapil, Dave Blaney, Sterling Marlin and Tony Raines.


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Edwards in Las Vegas looking for 1st win of season

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Carl Edwards opened last season on a roll, winning two of the first three races.

Then his race-winning car at Las Vegas Motor Speedway failed inspection, and Edwards was suddenly branded a cheater.

"It was a little bit deflating," Edwards admitted Friday.

Edwards is back a year later, confident his success after the Las Vegas fiasco diffused any belief that his Roush Fenway Racing team deliberately skirted NASCAR's rules. The cover was missing from his oil tank following the victory, leading to hefty penalties against Edwards and his team.

He was stripped of 100 points, plus the 10 bonus points he'd earned for the win, and crew chief Bob Osborne was fined $100,000 and suspended six weeks.

"No matter what everyone says, you've got to know in your heart what really happened," Edwards said. "It still was difficult to hear everyone's commentary that they thought we were purposely cheating. If we were gonna cheat, we would have made it a little more discreet. I mean, that oil tank cover was blown off up in the race car."

Edwards weathered the controversy and was back in Victory Lane a month later, at Texas, as he slowly worked his way back into a groove. He went on to a win a series-high nine Cup races while finishing second to Jimmie Johnson in the final season standings.

"If we wouldn't have won another race after (Las Vegas), that would have been tough," he said. "When we won that next race at Texas, that felt good just to win another one and move on. That kind of silenced all that (controversy)."

Now the preseason pick to dethrone Johnson's three-year reign goes into Sunday looking for a legal victory that will again prove his Roush Fenway Racing team has Las Vegas mastered.

But more important, a win would jump-start this season for Edwards. Although it's only two races into the year, Edwards is ninth in the standings and has had an awfully quiet start to the season.

He didn't contend for any wins during Speedweeks, but believes he would have finished in the top five of the season-opening Daytona 500 had he not been involved in the late nine-car accident triggered by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brian Vickers.

His Ford was damaged and Edwards wound up 18th in the rain-shortened event won by teammate Matt Kenseth.

He was better last week in California, where he finished seventh. But as the defending winner of that event, he'd hoped for a repeat trip to the winner's circle.

Edwards is certain the first two events of the 36-race season aren't an indication of how the No. 99 team will stack up against the competition this year. He was the hottest driver in NASCAR at the end of last season, winning three of the final four events in both the Cup and Nationwide Series to close out the year.

"I know that our whole team is gonna be fine," he said. "It's still so early. But, yeah, it feels like two races and we haven't won one -- with the way we were going at the end of the season -- that feels like an eternity. But I think we're gonna be OK."

Defending last year's race win will require Edwards knocking down his own teammates: Kenseth is on a two-race winning streak, and Greg Biffle had a car strong enough to contend for the California win last week before a pit road mistake contributed to his fourth-place finish.

The Roush team has dominated the track since its 1998 inaugural race, won by then-Roush driver Mark Martin. There have been five others since then, including Kenseth's consecutive wins in 2003 and 2004.

But Edwards isn't putting too much of an emphasis on beating his teammates this week. Instead, it's all about the bigger picture.

"We won a lot of races last year and that was great, but we didn't win the championship," Edwards said. "We know what it feels like to win races, we just want to win the championship. I have a couple goals: Number one, just make the chase. Number two, to win the championship.

"I don't really care how many races we win doing it as long as we can achieve those goals."


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Quadriplegic to make history at Pikes Peak

Travis Tollett plans to make some history July 19 at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb when he becomes the first quadriplegic to compete in the annual "Race to the Clouds."

Tollett, who injured his spinal cord in a July 1, 2007, crash during the Gold Camp Hill Climb in Victor, Colo., will team with Steve Bennett in a specially equipped Mazda RX-7 TurboII.

He broke his C6 and C7 vertebrae when his car went off course and crashed at close to 90 mph.

"From the day they told me I'd never walk again or ride again, I knew I could prove everyone wrong," said Tollett, from Walters, Okla. "From Day 1 I've kept the best attitude about this that is humanly possible and continue to do that each day. I still believe I can come back from this and be better than ever as long as I believe in myself.

"The chance to be a part of this race again is just awesome and I will make it to the top."

Bennett has competed in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb since 2004 and was seventh last year in the Open Wheel Division in a 1996 Wells Coyote, while Tollett has also competed in the event before, but only in Quads.

"This will be a totally new experience for me, tackling the Peak in a car with a windshield and fenders," Bennett said. "The Mazda RX-7 really is a different car than the Coyote. It's low, and wide, lightweight with good power from the turbocharged engine, and I plan on getting everything I can out of it."

The Pikes Peak event, which began in 1916, is America's second-oldest motorsports race behind the Indianapolis 500, which first ran in 1911. The hill climb is run on a 12.42-mile course that begins at 9,390 feet and finishes at the 14,110-foot summit.

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BEING THERE: Regan Smith, last year's NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie of the year, watched last Sunday's race at Auto Club Speedway in California on television from his Mooresville, N.C., home, and he didn't find it very satisfying.

"It was hard to watch," said Smith, who opened the season with a 21st-place finish in the Daytona 500. "When it's Sunday you want to be in a race car, competing against your peers. It was even more difficult to watch because of how well we ran in the Daytona 500. I wanted to be there mixing it up with everyone else."

Smith missed the second Cup race of the season because the Denver-based Furniture Row team is scheduled to run a limited schedule in 2009 due to lack of sponsorship.

But the No. 78 Chevrolet will be back in action this week, with Smith hoping to qualify for Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"I had a good time in Daytona and felt really comfortable in the new surroundings," said the 25-year-old Smith, who drove for Dale Earnhardt Inc. last year. "Hopefully, we can put it all together again in Las Vegas and come away with another solid team effort. We want to make the most out of every race we enter."

Smith's only Cup start at LVMS was last year when he started 28th and finished 34th.

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OVAL ROOKIE: Robert Doornbos made his IndyCar Series debut during a preseason test this week at Homestead-Miami Speedway, also getting his first taste of oval racing.

The 27-year-old Dutchman, who last raced in the U.S. in the now-defunct Champ Car Series two years ago, took part in a four-man rookie test Monday on the 1.5-mile Florida oval, completing 111 laps in his new Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing entry.

"Driving on an oval is definitely different than I expected," Doornbos said. "It felt like going to a new school on the first day. I didn't really know what to expect.

"I got a lot of information from the team, but you have to do it for yourself."

Doornbos said he was questioning his decision to drive in IndyCar after the first five laps. But, after that, things began to fall into place.

"Once you reach that pace it's actually quite fun, so we ended the day on a good note and I can go to bed with a smile. I already got the bug and want to go faster and faster, so that's a good thing. That was definitely the fastest I have gone in a race car and I am quite proud.

"I have no idea what to expect with traffic. It must be something like driving in the middle of the night in China, the traffic is quite bad there. I will just take it as it comes."

Doornbos also took part in the IndyCar open test at Homestead on Tuesday and Wednesday and will drive in his first series race April 5 on the temporary street circuit in St. Petersburg, Fla.


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Allmendinger still hoping for full-season Cup ride

AJ Allmendinger hasn't spent the last two-plus seasons trying to prove himself on NASCAR's top circuit to bail out now.

Sure, having to race his way onto the grid week after week can get tiring. Yes, it's difficult living on Sprint Cup's perpetual bubble.

Yet there's no place the 27-year-old would rather be. Not Formula 1. Not IndyCar. Give the affable California kid a decent Cup car and he'll take his chances.

"I believe that this is the toughest racing series in the world," he said. "I haven't worked this hard for two years to go out there and give up on it."

Maybe, but he might not have a choice.

The driver of the No. 44 Dodge for Richard Petty Motorsports heads to Las Vegas this week a solid 13th in points but still in search for a sponsor with deep enough pockets to pick his team up for a full season.

"Ultimately, yeah, we'd like to have that $15 million sponsorship that gets us through the whole season," he said. "But if we can just piece together race by race and keep having good finishes, I'm confident that we're going to get a couple of companies to step up."

The window is closing. Allmendinger signed an eight-race deal with revamped RPM -- a hybrid of Gillett Evernham and Petty Enterprises -- following a tumultuous offseason when he appeared poised to inherit Elliott Sadler's ride in the No. 19 car before team officials backed off and let Sadler keep his job.

By the time the deal fell through, all the former Red Bull Racing regular had left was the part-time gig in the No. 44. He made the field for the Daytona 500 through the 150-mile qualifying race then backed it up with a third-place finish in the rain-shortened event.

Allmendinger came back to earth last week in California, stumbling to 29th thanks to a pit violation and now heads to Las Vegas this week hoping to make the race, something he failed to do in each of the last two years while driving Red Bull Racing's No. 84 Toyota.

When Allmendinger failed to make the field in Las Vegas last spring, Red Bull ended up taking him out of the car for over a month in favor of Mike Skinner. It was a cold splash of reality and perhaps the first sign that he wasn't in Red Bull's long-term plans.

"At first it was really difficult," Allmendinger said. "As a driver you never really want to be taken out of your ride. You don't want to lose your job over that, and that was tough at first."

Skinner, however, stressed to Allmendinger that it wasn't personal. If anything, the longtime NASCAR veteran reinforced Allmendinger's confidence.

"The first thing he said to me when he got out of the race car the first time driving it was, 'Well, it's not you. I can tell you that. It's the team. They need to work on things,"' Allmendinger said. "That's not taking anything away from me. I feel like I always need to keep improving. But it just made it a lot easier."

Allmendinger got back in the seat for the spring race at Talladega, beginning a string of 21 straight starts. He put together a top-10 at Indianapolis and a season-best ninth during the fall race at Kansas.

It wasn't good enough for Allmendinger to stay in the No. 84. Red Bull pulled him in favor of Scott Speed, and Allmendinger spent the fall doing spot duty in the No. 00 for Michael Waltrip Racing before ending the year with a five-race run in the No. 10 for Gillett Evernham.

Then came all the drama with Sadler, though Allmendinger knew it was never personal, just business. Sadler worked with Allmendinger to help him qualify for Daytona, and the two joined RPM teammate Reed Sorenson in the top 10 during the 500.

It's heady territory for a team that didn't exist two months ago. Learning the names of the guys on his pit crew hasn't been easy, and Allmendinger admits there's still plenty of people back at RPM's shop in North Carolina that he doesn't know. It's something he hopes to remedy if he gets the time.

Whether he will is unclear. While there is no official fallback plan if things at RPM don't work out, he's hoping to have some options, including a possible ride in the Indianapolis 500.

"If nothing works out, I'd love to run Indy," he said. "But that's not my first goal. ... (But) something I've learned in racing is the fact that you never say 'No' to anything and you leave every option that you can open."

The best option would be not having to take any of the others. He'll try and stick it out, just the way his parents did when they mortgaged their home three different times to keep their son racing.

Living weekend to weekend might not be an ideal situation. But Allmendinger knows he can't worry about his future. There's too much to focus on in the present.

"The thing that I can go out there and control is driving the wheels off the race car and trying to finish as high as we can every race," he said. "That's what I'm going to do. If I do that, hopefully everything will fall into place."


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Former Indy 500 and series champ back in IndyCar

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- Dario Franchitti was walking from his car to the team's transporter Tuesday night when a trio of crewman from a rival team strode past.

"Welcome back, Dario," they shouted.

Franchitti smiled and returned the greeting. It's good to be back home.

The Scot has returned to open-wheel racing after taking a shot at NASCAR following the 2007 season, when he won the Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar Series championship.

The stock car adventure ended abruptly last July when team owner Chip Ganassi closed Franchitti's team for lack of sponsorship, with few prospects of finding any backing in the bleak economy.

Tuesday, during a break on the opening day of preseason testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Franchitti said he has mixed feelings about his short stay in NASCAR.

"I'm disappointed because I've been lucky enough to win in everything I've ever done," he said. "So the fact I didn't win, or (have) what I consider success, kind of grates a little bit. I'm very happy to be where I am right now, with this opportunity. But I'd like to have been successful in that area."

But Franchitti doesn't consider his time in NASCAR a failure.

"I was getting the hang of it by the end of it," he said. "Certainly, the last three races in the Cup car I was starting to run as good if not better than my teammates. And, in the Nationwide car, we qualified on the pole at the road course (at Watkins Glen) and on the front row at Bristol and led 80-something laps there.

"So I was getting the hang of it, but it just wasn't to be. The economy and stuff, all those things, it just wasn't to be."

For other drivers who have run head-on into the economic turmoil in the past year, that would have meant looking for another ride when few are available.

But Ganassi, whose IndyCar team won the Indy 500 and the championship last year with Scott Dixon, needed a replacement for Dan Wheldon, who left to join Panther Racing.

Franchitti was the obvious choice.

"When there was a possibility of an opening on our IndyCar team, the only person I thought about was Dario," Ganassi said when he made the announcement last September. "This is going to be a great move for Dario and for our team."

Franchitti is pretty happy, too.

"How lucky am I that I got to go away and do (NASCAR) for a year, come back here and jump into the best drive in the paddock?" he said. "Believe me, I'm well aware of how lucky I am."

Mike Hull, the team's managing director, said he has no doubt that Franchitti can be a contender for race wins and championships right from the outset.

"I don't think he'll miss a beat," Hull said Tuesday night.

"I don't think Dario's going to miss an opportunity because he's got a teammate who is very unselfish and is going to share everything," he added. "And, in turn, Scott Dixon as a teammate is going to receive from Dario what he needs. ... I think we've already found out how much they complement each other and how much they can help each other."

Dixon echoed is boss.

"I think he's going to fare extremely well," Dixon said. "I think he's more motivated, basically because he had a bit of a bad year and I think he wants to right a few wrongs. I think he's going to be, at least from my standpoint, my toughest competition for the whole season."

Dixon was fastest among the 21 drivers who ran in the opening test session Tuesday night, while Franchitti wasn't far behind in third.

"I'm just getting used to the speed of it, what happens in an IndyCar and the feeling of the car," Franchitti said. "I've already made good changes, so I think we'll be all right. I have no worries about the car. You can see the job the Target guys do. I just need to get myself up to speed, and we'll get that done."

There was some surprise when Franchitti decided to come back to IndyCar, particularly since there had been plenty of talk that his wife, actress Ashley Judd, considers open-wheel racing too dangerous.

"Ashley and I were driving back from the Nationwide race in Michigan (in August)," Franchitti said. "Chip and I had talked about the possibility of me going back to IndyCar as early as the first week in July. I turn and I say, 'Hey, how would you feel if I went back to IndyCar?' I thought, 'This should be interesting.'

"She said, 'I would love it. I would absolutely love for you to get to go back and do what you love and what you're very, very good at.' It wasn't the reply I was expecting. Her support means a lot."

Franchitti said the talk about his wife's fears are exaggerated.

"I think a lot of people made that up," he said. "Ashley's been through a lot with me, from falling off my (motorcycle) and breaking my back to some of the big (open-wheel) accidents I've walked away from. She's been around some pretty bad times in the sport. She's well aware of the dangers of it and she accepts those, as all my family did. That's the way it has to be or you can't do this."

And, now that he's back, Franchitti feels comfortable and ready to compete.

"I have years and years, 12 years I think, of running either Champ Cars or IndyCars, so I have a lot of experience," he said. "All that was kind of the culmination of years of driving smaller cars that handled the same.

"When I went to NASCAR, it threw everything I knew out the window with a completely different style of driving," Franchitti noted. "It should be a bit easier going back the other way."


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Dixon off and running as IRL testing begins

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- Reigning champion Scott Dixon led the way Tuesday night on the first of two days of preseason testing for the IndyCar Series.

Dixon turned a fast lap of 211.372 mph to top the six-hour session under the lights at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Team Penske's Ryan Briscoe was close behind at 210.793, followed at 210.603 by 2007 series champ Dario Franchitti, newly returned from an aborted run in NASCAR to join Dixon at Target Chip Ganassi Racing.

"We've got a lot of momentum that we're coming off from last year as well and we're going to try to keep that going," Dixon said. "You have to strike while the team's hot and team's doing everything right at the momentum. You can see right from the first session we're right where we need to be."

Franchitti said, "I'm still very much in the first stage of sort of getting used to the car again. But I'll be fine."

Twenty-one cars made runs on the 1.5-mile oval, with Dan Wheldon, another former champion, expected to make it 22 in Wednesday's session. Wheldon missed the Tuesday session due to a previous commitment.


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Gordon on the verge of returning to Victory Lane

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Rick Hendrick began his 25th season in NASCAR full of expectations for his storied organization.

He predicted newcomer Mark Martin would make all four of his drivers championship contenders, that Dale Earnhardt Jr. would find a comfort level at Hendrick Motorsports and Jimmie Johnson would continue his run through the NASCAR record books.

But for Jeff Gordon, his 17-year money man, the boss had a promise: Gordon would win again.

"Multiple races," Hendrick insisted. "No doubt about it."

So far, Gordon is 0-for-2. But the first two races suggest he'll be back in Victory Lane very soon.

Gordon led 64 laps Sunday night before finishing second at Auto Club Speedway. The four-time series champion was unable to chase down winner Matt Kenseth over the closing laps, but he found some consolation: His No. 24 team is far ahead of where it was this time last year, when Gordon had his first winless season since his 1993 rookie campaign.

"I'm so excited about this race team right now," he said. "I just think we're head and shoulders above where we were. I know it's just a couple races in, and this is one race. I love the way the car was driving."

He couldn't say that often last year, when he was slow to adjust to NASCAR's full-time use of its new model car. Although he was third at Fontana a year ago, and notched three top-10 finishes through the first six races, it wasn't a true indication of where the team was in terms of preparation or performance.

It became evident in April, when a crash caused him to finish last in Texas, and he followed with nondescript runs in Phoenix and Talladega. As the season wore on, the results that once had come so easily never materialized.

Soon it was October and he was at Lowe's Motor Speedway, a year removed from the last of his 81 victories. His fans were adamant that crew chief Steve Letarte was the problem. Gordon refused to cast blame, especially against someone who had guided him to a NASCAR-record 30 top-10 finishes in 36 starts just one year before. But, as his chances to return to Victory Lane dwindled, nothing seemed to change.

Hendrick believes Gordon's struggles last season were a companywide failure to provide the driver with the right tools.

"We were just not good enough for that team. I think Jeff is so used to carrying it on his shoulders, I think we all just gave up at one point there, but it motivated us to come back," Hendrick said. "That was the first year, I feel like we just let him down."

Gordon, however, takes responsibility. His back had been bothering him since his failed 2007 title run, and he never seriously considered a treatment for the spasms and tightness that sometimes broke his concentration in the car. He also admits his adjustment to the new car was slow despite one of his most extensive testing schedules.

Some drivers coming off such a year might question how much longer they can race. Gordon used it to refire his passion and rebuild his commitment to winning.

His wife, Ingrid, persuaded him to start a legitimate fitness routine, use a personal trainer and hire someone at the track to help him prepare his back for the rigors of 500 miles of racing.

And Letarte wanted an overhaul, handing Hendrick a list of changes he needed following the season finale at Homestead. He altered the engineering group, tinkered with personnel and the cars themselves.

The result was his a win in a Daytona 500 qualifying race, Gordon's first trip to Victory Lane in almost 16 months. But it didn't count -- at least not for not points -- and he's focused on snapping his 43-race winless streak.

He led 14 laps in the season-opening Daytona 500, but was 13th when rain halted the race and Kenseth was declared the winner. Had it gone the distance, Gordon is certain he would have contended for the win. And if he had a few more miles Sunday, he wonders if he would have run down Kenseth.

Regardless, he's positive he'll soon make Hendrick look like a prophet.

"I just feel good when I get in the car," he said. "The car is driving good. It's just starting off right. I think we only have room for improvement."


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Stewart off to strong start with new team

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Tony Stewart was all smiles Sunday after his second straight eighth-place finish of 2009.

Stewart, who left his longtime home at Joe Gibbs Racing after last season to become co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, said repeatedly before the season-opening Daytona 500 that he didn't know what to expect from his new team.

So far, so good.

"I'm not really that good here," Stewart said. "It tells you the car is better than I am probably. (But) I think we're capable of doing it. I mean, we've done it two weeks in a row now."

Stewart said that Sunday's Auto Club 500 was a truer test of where the team is than at Daytona, where engine restrictors produce a whole different style of racing than at most of the other tracks where NASCAR's Sprint Cup series competes.

"I was satisfied with the results of it," Stewart said. "We seemed to go back and forth on catching up with (the car), so I was pretty happy with the communication today. The guys had really good pit stops. That last stop out there they got us out seventh and I couldn't hold us up there. But, I felt like, team-wise we've been solid for two and a half weeks straight here now."

BIF'S MISTAKE: Greg Biffle finished fourth on Sunday, but you would never have known it from the grim look on his face.

The Bif, a strong contender through much of the race, was running second to Jeff Gordon when he made a costly mistake on his last pit stop. He slid his No. 16 Ford across his own air hose as he entered his pit box and NASCAR immediately penalized Biffle, pushing him back to 12th place.

Biffle was a man on a mission after that, moving all the way to fourth before running out of laps.

"They should fire me," he said immediately after getting out of his car. "That was a pretty fast car. I just screwed it up trying to get greedy.

"You know it was so hard to pass out here, and I was hoping to beat the 24 (Gordon) out and I was trying to give my guys every advantage I could. ... We had this problem before. It's just me stopping too deep in the box and caught them off guard and ran over the hose.

"They didn't do anything wrong," he added. "It was my fault."

Biffle said he was knew he was going to have trouble sleeping Sunday night.

"I'm just sick to my stomach, man," he said. "It almost brings tears to my eyes to know I let my guys down like I did."

But it wasn't all that bad a day for Biffle, who added Sunday's top-five finish to a far more disappointing 20th-place finish in the Daytona 500. He was one of three Roush Fenway Racing entries to finish in the top 10, joining winner Matt Kenseth and seventh-place Carl Edwards. The other two team drivers, Jamie McMurray and David Ragan, finished 16th and 17th.

LEARNING CURVE: Joey Logano, the 18-year-old rookie who moved into Tony Stewart's seat in the No. 20 Toyota at Joe Gibbs Racing, had another tough day of on-track education.

The youngster, who crashed and finished last at Daytona, stayed out of trouble Sunday, but finished a lap off the pace in 26th.

"I wish I learned half this stuff before we started racing," he said. "I'm happy with this. I think we definitely needed this, for sure, just kind of get the season rolling, get everything going.

"We're going to take it and improve from it and I feel a lot better."

Scott Speed, the only other rookie in the race, had an engine failure and finished 41st.

CROWD NOISE: Despite the economic crunch that has hit California particularly hard and predictions of a disastrously small turnout Sunday, it appeared the grandstand that holds 105,000 spectators was more than half full.

Auto Club Speedway president Gillian Zucker was obviously pleased with the numbers.

"This says a lot about what Southern Californians feel about NASCAR," she said as the cars zoomed around the nearby track. "I think there is not any kind of question about how hard this part of the country has been hit by the economy. ... To see this kind of a crowd in this grandstand says a lot, I think a heck of a lot, about how we've promoted this event and how much people are beginning to care about this sport the same way with the same passion as they have in the Southeast."

The track 60 miles east of Los Angeles has had trouble filling the stands since adding a second Cup date in 2004. But a swap with Atlanta Motor Speedway moved the second Auto Club Speedway race from Labor Day Weekend to October in 2009.

"We have a race now that's at a great time of year for racing in California," Zucker said. "We have a Chase race and I expect you'll see these crowds continue to grow. But the doom and gloom about the fact that California can't support NASCAR is dead wrong."

WEATHER WISE: The first four of five caution flags in Sunday's event were all brought out by light rain.

A year after heavy rains postponed the Cup race until Monday, the weather was just a nuisance, slowing down the proceedings for a total of 36 of the first 177 laps.

The cars continued to cruise around the 2-mile oval under each of the rain cautions until NASCAR deemed the track dry enough to wave the green flag again.

SPARK PLUGS: An engine failure sent Kevin Harvick into the wall on lap 208, ending his string of 81 consecutive races in which the Richard Childress Racing driver had been running at the end. He was 12th at the time. ... Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin, who ran among the leaders most of the day, both wound up in the garage with engine problems. ... Winner Matt Kenseth averaged 135.839 mph.


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Kenseth makes it 2 in a row

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Matt Kenseth's team has found some much-needed magic.

After going through a winless and disappointing 2008, the former NASCAR Sprint Cup champion is 2-0 in 2009, adding a victory in Sunday's Auto Club 500 to his win the previous week in the Daytona 500.

"Just great team, great crew, great, great engines," Kenseth bubbled in the aftermath of his 18th career victory. "You just need everything to go right, really to win these races."

At Daytona, Kenseth took the lead moments before rain, which eventually cut the race short, began to fall.

Sunday's race was considerably more dramatic, with Kenseth fending off a determined challenge from four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon to win for the third time on the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval.

Kenseth took the lead from Gordon in the pits under caution with 38 laps to go in the 250-lap race and stayed ahead, pulling away over the last 20 laps. But it took a while for the winner to shake Gordon, who went also went winless last year and is desperate to get back to Victory Lane.

"I honestly thought that we were going to be too loose at the end and he was going to catch us," Kenseth said. "Especially (when) I couldn't get away from him that time he ran me down and got right on my bumper (on lap 231)."

But get away he did, beating Gordon's No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the finish line by 1.464 seconds -- most of the front straightaway.

It is the first time a Cup driver has won the first two races of the season since Gordon did it in 1997 on the way to the second of his four championships.

The key to Kenseth's win Sunday was a near-perfect pit stop that put him in the lead on lap 213.

"It's such a great team," Kenseth said. "I just thank these guys (on the crew). They gave me a great stop and got me in clean air and that's just a huge difference.

"Our car handled really good all day and we had excellent pit stops. About the fourth one from the end, I started complaining and then, all of a sudden, they started getting me three or four spots every stop."

Earlier in the race, Kenseth, who led a race-high 84 laps, got out ahead and Gordon caught and passed him on a long green-flag run. But, after the final restart on lap 216, Kenseth found a way to stay in front.

At that point, both Kenseth and Gordon were much faster than the rest of the field at the end. They steadily pulled away from the pack. But Gordon was unable to get to Kenseth's rear bumper and get a real run on the No. 17 Roush Fenway Ford.

"I thought he was going to pass us again," Kenseth said. "Some people think I'm a pessimist, but I think I'm more of a realist. ... I don't even know what we changed. It wasn't easy, but we were able to hold them off."

Gordon, who has 81 career victories, hasn't won a points race since October of 2007 at Charlotte. But he did win a 150-mile qualifying race at Daytona, then ran strong and finished 13th last week in the rain-shortened 500.

"It was a lot of fun," Gordon said. "This is a new team and they showed it tonight. We've still got a little bit of work to do. I'm so excited on one side because we ran so well and we started out the season so great, but I'm still mad on the other side because I felt like we had what it took to win tonight."

Kenseth's win was also the fifth straight February victory here for team co-owner Jack Roush.

"I don't expect that to continue," Roush said. "We're hard-pressed to figure out what to do to be more ready. But my experience is that these things tend to even themselves out and I just hope that when we have to give back all this success, I'm not here, I'm someplace else."

Both Kenseth and Roush gave a lot of the credit for the fast start to Drew Blickensderfer, who became crew chief of the 17 over the winter.

"Drew has brought magic to the team," Roush said. "He knows how to build a team. He knows how to capitalize on the energy within a team and we needed it. We had all the people with the right skill sets on the team and we just needed someone to find the magic."

Kyle Busch, who made NASCAR history by winning both the truck and Nationwide races on Saturday, came up short of weekend sweep.

"It's never been done before, so you know it's a challenge," Busch said after finishing third. "The last one's always the hard one to get. It's on Sunday and it's the biggest show. Maybe one day."

Greg Biffle was a contender throughout the race, but fell to 12th after being penalized for running over his own air hose on a pit stop on lap 209. He charged all the way to fourth, but was still upset by his mistake.

"They should fire me," said Biffle, one of four Kenseth teammates. "You just can't make mistakes like that."

Kurt Busch finished fifth, followed by Denny Hamlin, defending race winner Carl Edwards, two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart and three-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who led 74 laps but faded in the late-going.


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Kenseth makes it 2 in a row, outruns Gordon at Fontana

Kenseth makes it 2 in a row, outruns Gordon at Fontana

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth made it two victories in a row Sunday, holding off a late challenge from Jeff Gordon to win the Auto Club 500.

Kenseth took the lead from Gordon in the pits under caution with 38 laps to go in the 250-lap race and stayed ahead in a battle of former NASCAR Sprint Cup champions, pulling away over the last 20 laps.

It is the first time a Cup driver has won the first two races of the season since Gordon did it in 1997 on the way to the second of his four championships.

"It's such a great team," Kenseth said. "I just thank these guys (on the crew). They gave me a great stop and got me in clean air and that's just a huge difference.

"Our pit stops started out great and then we had a bad one," he added. "I complained a little and then, all of sudden, we seemed to pick up three or four spots on every one after that."

Earlier in the race, Kenseth, who led a race-high 84 laps, got out ahead and Gordon caught and passed him on a long green-flag run. But, after the final restart on lap 216, Kenseth found a way to stay in front.

At that point, both Kenseth and Gordon were much faster than the rest of the field at the end. They steadily pulled away from the pack. But Gordon, like Kenseth winless last year, was unable to get to Kenseth's rear bumper and get a real run on the No. 17 Roush Fenway Ford.

"I thought he was going to pass us," Kenseth said. "Earlier, I had a good run and, in the middle of it, he just caught up, ran right by me and took off. I thought it was going to happen again.

"I could tell right away (the car) was better (after the last stop), but I honestly thought it was going to be too loose before it was over. I guess his car got a little too tight and was able to hang on there. (My crew) just made the perfect adjustment and I had the perfect pit stop."

Gordon, who has 81 career victories, hasn't won a points race since October of 2007 at Charlotte. But he did win a 150-mile qualifying race at Daytona, then ran strong and finished 13th last week in the rain-shortened 500.

"It was a lot of fun," Gordon said. "This is a new team and they showed it tonight. We've still got a little bit of work to do. I'm so excited on one side because we ran so well and we started out the season so great, but I'm still mad on the other side because I felt like we had what it took to win tonight."

It was Kenseth's 18th career victory and third on the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval. It was also the fifth straight February victory here for team co-owner Jack Roush.

Both Kenseth and Roush gave a lot of the credit for the fast start to Drew Blickensderfer, who became crew chief of the 17 over the winter.

"Drew has brought magic to the team," Roush said. "He knows how to build a team. He knows how to capitalize on the energy within a team and we needed it. We had all the people with the right skill sets on the team and we just needed someone to find the magic."

Kyle Busch, who made NASCAR history by winning both the truck and Nationwide races on Saturday, came up short of weekend sweep.

"It's never been done before, so you know it's a challenge," Busch said after finishing third. "The last one's always the hard one to get. It's on Sunday and it's the biggest show. Maybe one day."

Greg Biffle was a contender throughout the race, but fell to 12th after being penalized for running over his own air hose on a pit stop on lap 209. He charged all the way to fourth, but was still upset by his mistake.

"They should fire me," said Biffle, one of four Kenseth teammates. "You just can't make mistakes like that."

Kurt Busch finished fifth, followed by Denny Hamlin, defending race winner Carl Edwards, two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart and three-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who led 74 laps but faded in the late-going.


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Kyle Busch overpowers truck field

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Kyle Busch didn't need any last-lap heroics this time. The NASCAR star simply stayed out front in Saturday's truck race.

Busch led 95 of 100 laps in capturing his second straight win on the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval. It was his 10th series victory.

Last week at Daytona, Busch failed to make late-race passes pay off at the Camping World Truck Series and Nationwide races, but there was nothing to be disappointed about Saturday.

"It was just flawless," Busch said of his Toyota truck. "This one's for Doug George. It's his first win as crew chief. It's a lot of these guys first win, as a matter of fact."

Busch, scheduled to race again later Saturday in the Nationwide race, finished second to Todd Bodine in the Daytona truck race after trying unsuccessfully to bump his way past the leader on the final lap. He tried the same move on Tony Stewart in the Nationwide event, and wound up fourth after Stewart fended off the move and broke Busch's momentum.

But the 23-year-old Busch, who had 21 overall victories last year -- three in trucks, 10 in Nationwide and eight in Cup -- was just too strong at the Southern California track.

Bodine stayed with him for a while, but eventually slipped out of contention, finishing more than 9 seconds -- more than the distance of the front straightaway -- behind.

"It's a little disappointing to have a Tundra that's that good and finish second," Bodine said. "That tells you how good Kyle was.

"As the tires got hot and slick, he just was able to get through the corners a little better, and that was probably the difference," added Bodine, who had won two straight races, including last year's finale at Homestead.

The former series champion, driving for Germain Racing, is going race-to-race without sponsorship.

"I guess we'll be going to Atlanta (for the next race)," he said. "Hopefully, somebody's out there watching, paying attention. A first and a second so far, that's pretty good."

Chad McCumbee finished third, followed by David Starr, T.J. Bell, Ron Hornaday Jr., Matt Crafton and former bike racing star Ricky Carmichael, the top finishing rookie.

Defending series champion Johnny Benson was never in contention and finished 12th.


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Kyle Busch completes Saturday sweep with Nationwide romp

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Kyle Busch added a dominating NASCAR Nationwide Series victory to an overpowering truck win earlier Saturday at Auto Club Speedway.

The 23-year-old speedster, who led 95 of 100 laps in winning the Camping World Truck Series race, was out front for 143 of 150 laps on the 2-mile oval to earn his 22nd Nationwide victory. He became the first driver to win races in two NASCAR national touring series in the same day.

Former series champion Carl Edwards beat Busch out of the pits on the last pit stops by the leaders, but Busch powered back into the lead on the restart 16 laps from the end and pulled away.

"It's awesome," Busch said after climbing out of his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. "This is just a blast. It's pretty special to beat guys like Carl and Kevin (Harvick). To win here twice in one day is even more special."

Despite building leads of up to 11 seconds at times during the race, it all came down to the restart on lap 135 after Edwards beat Busch out of the pits by the length of the hood on his No. 60 Ford.

On the restart, Busch nudged Edwards and dove under him as Harvick, in third, made it three-wide for several seconds before Edwards slipped all the way to fifth. Busch easily led the rest of the way, beating Harvick to the finish line by 1.011 seconds -- most of the front straightaway and almost the same margin he had in beating Todd Bodine in the truck race.

Busch's JGR teammate Joey Logano held off a determined bid by Edwards to finish third in the Nationwide event.

"You know, it's just racing," Edwards said of the winning pass. "I couldn't see behind me, but it felt like we were just racing real hard. I think I might have got touched, but he was going for the win and that's what the fans pay for.

"Man, Kyle was just in a league of his own tonight, so it was tough to be able to hang with him for most of the night."

The victory came in the first race back for crew chief Jason Ratliff, suspended along with fellow crew chief Dave Rogers for the second half of last season after the Gibbs team was caught trying to manipulate the results of an engine dynomometer test at Michigan International Speedway.

"I've been dreaming about this," Ratliff said. "It's a heck of a way to come back."


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Cup notebook: Nervous Gilliland back in a car

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- David Gilliland has one of those classic good news-bad news situations.

After two full seasons in NASCAR's Sprint Cup series, and spending most of that time with Yates Racing and in the top 35 in car owner points, Gilliland now finds himself with a new brand new Cup team and having to qualify for races on speed.

Yates Racing told Gilliland in January, but they made his departure official earlier this week, sending out a release that said a lack of sponsorship on the team's No. 38 Ford led to the driver's departure.

"David did a great job for us and is a gifted driver," Doug Yates said. "We are sorry to lose him, but it is important for David to continue driving and sponsorship is very tough this year."

Gilliland, who has two top-fives and four top-10s in 87 Cup starts, found work with the new TRG Motorsports team headed by Kevin Buckler. But not until after Mike Wallace fell just short of putting the team in the Daytona 500.

One of 12 drivers vying for eight starting spots here, Gilliland qualified 32nd for Sunday's Auto Club.

"I'm a little nervous coming back," the 33-year-old Gilliland said Saturday. "I always have a few nerves. I haven't been out of the top 34 for a while. It's nerve-racking. During qualifying, you think one slip or pushing too hard could make you go home."

Buckler, who also fields a Camping World Series truck and a car in the ARCA series, only has sponsorship lined up for the first five Cup races of 2009. But he said TRG has hired Gilliland and veteran crew chief Slugger Labbe to help build the team a full-time Cup program.

"David has the most experience in the COT car of any driver available," Buckler said. "Slugger gives us a lot of experience working with the COT car. We were short a few pieces at Daytona, but I believe we have put the right people together to have a successful weekend in California."

But Buckler is focused well beyond this weekend's Auto Club 500.

"We are pulling out all of the stops to make the next (three) races," Buckler said. "We want to be in the top 35 in owner points by the time we finish Bristol. ... The water is deep in NASCAR and we are not afraid to dive in with the sharks, but we have a very steep learning curve ahead of us and we will do our best.

"We took a big hit a Daytona by not making the race, but we have taken that and turned it into determination. Everyone involved sees the upside and wants to keep our foot firmly planted on the accelerator to turn this into a full season."

------

BIG CHANCE: Jeff Gordon believes the reeling economy could offer an unusual opportunity for success to some of the new teams getting involved in NASCAR.

The reason: NASCAR's 2-year-old Car of Tomorrow.

The COT has standardized the cars, taking away a lot of the tweaks and gimmicks that the big budget teams were able to use to put some distance between themselves and the have-nots.

"With this car, there has never been a better opportunity for teams with less funding, maybe less personnel, to be able to pull off some spectacular finishes and maybe even a win," Gordon said.

But, even with NASCAR banning testing at sanctioned tracks, Gordon acknowledges the top team still have a big advantage.

"While the economy has affected some of the teams further down in the field, the teams that were strong last year have only gotten stronger and, in that sense, it's only going to be more competitive toward the front of the field," the four-time Cup champion said.

"I think you're actually going to see it tighter and faster and more competitive at the front of the field."

------

IN CHARGE: Kevin Harvick says owning a NASCAR team that fields a car in the Nationwide Series and two trucks in the Camping World Series has helped his preparation as a driver.

The co-owner of Kevin Harvick Inc. with wife DeLana and driver for Richard Childress Racing, Harvick is off to a solid start in 2009, winning the non-points Budweiser Shootout and finishing second in the Daytona 500.

"I think the ownership side of it has definitely helped understand the sport better," he said. "It has helped my relationship with Richard, just understanding where he is coming from on a lot of different things and really knowing how much things cost to make things go around.

"Respecting what you have, as far as equipment and things like that, it kind of puts it all in perspective for you. I think it has made me a more well-rounded person. It has made me a better driver and I think it has come with a lot of learning experiences. I think, for the most part, it has made everything better."

------

QUICK FIX: It only took about two minutes for Reed Sorenson to find trouble in Saturday's final Sprint Cup practice session.

Driving for Richard Petty Motorsports, Sorenson's No. 43 Dodge suddenly veered to the right and hit the wall hard.

"Something broke in the right front and it took a hard right turn," said Sorenson, coming off a ninth-place finish at Daytona. "Hopefully, the backup car will be good."

It took his crew less than an hour to get the backup car off the team hauler and onto the track, giving Sorenson about 45 precious minutes of track time.

"It feels pretty darn good," Sorenson told crew chief Mike Shiplett after the first few laps. He wound up 39th among the 43 cars that took part in the practice.

Sorenson qualified 17th, but will have to start from the rear of the field after moving to the backup car.


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NASCAR ready for whole new world in California

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- 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.


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Vickers wins then loses pole to engine change

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Brian Vickers thought he finally had some good news to override the controversy of the past week.

The 25-year-old Red Bull Racing driver won the pole for Sunday's Auto Club 500, barely beating heavily favored Jimmie Johnson. But, about an hour after taking the sixth pole of his NASCAR Sprint Cup career with a lap of 183.429 mph, Vickers found out his team would have to change the engine in his No. 83 Toyota, sending him to the back of the 43-car field.

He will still be listed as the pole winner, but the youngster will drop out of line when the cars start moving on Sunday and fall to the back, while Johnson, whose fast lap was 183.164, gets to lead the field to the green flag.

The pole would have been big for Vickers, especially in the wake of the Daytona 500 controversy that was sparked when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Vickers collided, setting off a 10-car crash.

Vickers had forced Earnhardt below the yellow out-of-bounds line on the 2.5-mile Daytona oval and Earnhardt turned back up the banking and hit Vickers, igniting the multicar crash and a whole lot of finger pointing.

"Obviously, the best way to move on from a situation or a controversy is to give them something else to talk about," Vickers said Friday before learning about the engine change. "And, so far, we've done that this week in a positive way.

"After what happened last week, controversy aside, the only thing that matters in my mind when I think about Daytona is we didn't collect the amount of points we needed or wanted to collect to race for a championship."

He said he and his team would love to put Daytona behind them going from the pole to lead every lap and win Sunday's race.

"I think the next challenge is going to be a lot more difficult than the first one," Vickers said.

Much more so now.

Johnson, who has three wins on the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval, was asked how the lack of offseason testing -- a fan imposed by NASCAR to save the teams money in the current economic climate -- effected Friday's performance in practice and qualifying.

"I kind of forgot about the fact that we haven't tested as today got started," the three-time reigning Cup champion said. "I don't know, I guess I haven't put a lot of thought in to it. In some ways it reminded me of kind of the last time we were here.

"The guys that were fast last time at this track were fast again."

Jamie McMurray was third at 182.653, followed by Kurt Busch at 182.556, Greg Biffle at 182.302, Jeff Gordon at 182.209, David Reutimann at 182.089 and A.J. Allmendinger, the fastest of the drivers who had to qualifying on speed, at 182.048.

Rookie Scott Speed, Vickers' teammate, was ninth at 181.965 and Kyle Busch, who won the pole for Saturday's Camping World Truck Series race earlier in the day, rounded out at the top 10 at 181.919.

Tony Stewart, racing for his own Stewart-Haas Racing team for only the second time in a Cup event, was 11th at 181.901, while Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth was 24th at 180.818.

Failing to make the lineup were Todd Bodine, Tony Raines, David Starr, Mike Garvey and Sterling Marlin.


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Vickers nips Johnson for Cup pole

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- It seemed just about everybody was conceding the pole for Sunday's Auto Club 500 to Jimmie Johnson.

Brian Vickers apparently didn't get the word.

The 25-year-old Red Bull Racing driver won the sixth pole of his career Friday, touring the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval at 183.429 mph. That relegated three-time reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Johnson to the outside of the front row for the 500-mile race. Johnson had a lap at 183.164 mph.

The time difference was just 0.059 seconds.

"The only thing I can think is Vickers and I went to In-N-Out Burger last night and I had a double and he had a single," Johnson said, joking. "I guess that extra patty killed me."

Whatever the reason he was able to beat Johnson, the pole was big for Vickers, especially in the wake of the Daytona 500 controversy that was sparked when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Vickers collided, setting off a 10-car crash.

Vickers had forced Earnhardt below the yellow out-of-bounds line on the 2.5-mile Daytona oval and Earnhardt turned back up the banking and hit Vickers, igniting the multicar crash and a whole lot of finger pointing.

"Obviously, the best way to move on from a situation or a controversy is to give them something else to talk about," Vickers said Friday. "And, so far, we've done that this week in a positive way.

"After what happened last week, controversy aside, the only thing that matters in my mind when I think about Daytona is we didn't collect the amount of points we needed or wanted to collect to race for a championship."

He said he and his team would love to put Daytona behind them going from the pole to lead every lap and win Sunday's race.

"I think the next challenge is going to be a lot more difficult than the first one," Vickers said.

But there wasn't much question about the pole.

"It was a perfect lap and the car handled amazing all the way around," Vickers said. "In any of the NASCAR series, but the Sprint Cup series especially, you just about have to have the perfect car and the perfect lap to sit on the pole. I've had some really good cars and some really good laps and been fifth."

Jamie McMurray was third at 182.653, followed by Kurt Busch at 182.556, Greg Biffle at 182.302, Jeff Gordon at 182.209, David Reutimann at 182.089 and A.J. Allmendinger, the fastest of the drivers who had to qualifying on speed, at 182.048.

Rookie Scott Speed, Vickers' teammate, was ninth at 181.965 and Kyle Busch, who won the pole for Saturday's Camping World Truck Series race earlier in the day, rounded out at the top 10 at 181.919.

Tony Stewart, racing for his own Stewart-Haas Racing team for only the second time in a Cup event, was 11th at 181.901, while Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth was 24th at 180.818.

Failing to make the lineup were Todd Bodine, Tony Raines, David Starr, Mike Garvey and Sterling Marlin.


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Waltrip team plane makes emergency landing

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- A group of Michael Waltrip Racing team members had a little more excitement than they would have liked on the flight from North Carolina to Southern California for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

A two-engine Bombardier CRJ-200 with 44 team members and a crew of four made an emergency landing Thursday in Las Vegas after one of its engines developed a problem.

Ty Norris, vice president and general manager of MWR, said the plane left from Statesville, N.C., made a fuel stop in Salinas, Kan., and was flying at about 38,000 feet when the left engine lost oil pressure and the pilots shut it down.

"For those of us on the airplane, we didn't even know what was going on until they told us," Norris said. "I've been hearing a lot of things about what it must have been like on the plane. Honestly, when we descended into Las Vegas, the plane operated flawlessly on one engine and we landed with absolutely zero incident.

"The only thing that was different about the landing was the safety trucks and fire trucks waiting for us at the Las Vegas airport."

Norris said the whole thing sounds more dramatic than it really was.

"Obviously, it's always a concern when you have a dual-engine plane that only flies on one," he said. "But the pilots were flawless. Not to discount the fact that it's a scary situation, but the way the pilots handled it, we landed without incident got on a bus and got here last night."

The four-hour bus trip was without incident.

None of the teams drivers were on the plane because all of them had flown out earlier in the week to take part in a meeting at Toyota Racing Development's headquarters in Torrance.

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GETTING GOING: The Cup season officially began last week at Daytona, but Carl Edwards figures this weekend's Auto Club 500 is going to answer a lot more questions.

"I think the season really starts here," said Edwards, the media pick as the preseason favorite to dethrone three-time reigning champion Jimmie Johnson.

"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 works.

"And the things that work here are going to apply at a lot of race tracks," last year's series runner-up added. "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."

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CHAMPION'S REWARD: After all the excitement of winning the Daytona 500 and making a promotional trip to New York and San Francisco, Matt Kenseth knew exactly what he wanted to do next.

"Just sleep," he said Friday, grinning. "Just try to eat good and sleep.

"Actually, I didn't get that great of sleep last night, but I've been getting caught up a little bit. I was fairly tired on Monday and I got a lot of sleep, actually Monday night, and was more tired Tuesday, and then got not that much sleep Tuesday night, a lot Wednesday night, a lot Thursday night and feel like I'm almost back to normal."

Kenseth said finally getting back in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Friday was like a big wake-up call.

"Getting back to the normal weekend schedule, like we do every weekend, with normal three-day weekends, getting on the track and doing all of that will probably get me more prepared for (racing again) than anything else."

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ROYAL TOUCH: Kasey Kahne says one of the best parts about the merger last month of Gillett Evernham Motorsports and Petty Enterprises into Richard Petty Motorsports is getting to spend time with NASCAR's longtime King.

"You see The King all day," Kahne said. "Whether he's a part of your team or not, the guy walks. He's always around. I'll run into him five times today and he won't be looking for me once.

"I ran into him when I got here this morning. We just crossed paths walking and we sat there and talked for about 10 minutes. Usually, when I run into him, it's because we're walking the same path at the same time. He's on the run always."

Kahne said Petty is more than just an icon of the stock car sport.

"He's just a cool guy that's done a ton in this sport," he said. "It gives everybody a good attitude."

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SPARK PLUGS: Kyle Busch, doing his usual triple this weekend -- racing in Cup, Nationwide and trucks -- captured his third career Camping World Truck Series pole Friday. His lap of 174.161 mph easily beat defending champion Johnny Benson's 172.683. ... Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon lead all active drivers with three wins each on Auto Club Speedway's 2-mile oval, while Matt Kenseth leads in top-10s with 10 in 14 starts. ... Johnson has the best average finish among the Cup drivers at 5.917.


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Junior shakes off rare criticism

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. found himself early this week in the rare position of being the object of a chorus of criticism from fellow drivers, the media and even fans who normally support him unconditionally.

"I did get ripped up quite a bit," NASCAR's most popular driver said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. "I didn't even want to go on the web.

"It's interesting to be on this side of the fence," Earnhardt added. "I'm not on this side too much."

The complaints arose after Earnhardt ignited a 10-car wreck on a restart late in last Sunday's Daytona 500, the low point in a race filled with mistakes by the Hendrick Motorsports star.

Junior was trying to pass Brian Vickers with both of them a lap down but near the front of the lead pack. Vickers blocked the move by pushing Earnhardt down below the yellow out-of-bounds line. He hit Earnhardt in the process, and when Earnhardt came back onto the racing surface, he clipped the left-rear corner of Vickers' car. That sent Vickers shooting across the track and the melee was on.

That's when the finger pointing began.

Earnhardt called Vickers "a damn idiot" and Vickers returned the compliment, saying that Earnhardt should have been penalized by NASCAR for aggressive driving and had crashed him intentionally.

Other drivers criticized both Earnhardt and Vickers for making such aggressive moves while a lap down.

The Internet and sports talk shows were swarmed all week by fans who wanted NASCAR to suspend, fine or take points from Earnhardt for the incident.

"I definitely could have used better judgement coming back up on the racetrack, but it's hard to tell," Earnhardt said after the opening practice for Sunday's Auto Club 500 at the Southern California track. "I mean, there was rain coming, I was a lap down (and) I had to get my lap back to even have a shot at winning the race."

He further defended himself saying, "It all happened pretty fast and it was unfortunate how it went down. (But) my statistics at the plate tracks speak for themselves and I don't really have to defend myself at how good a plate racer I am and what kind of moves I make out on the racetrack.

"I got just as much right to be on that racetrack and do whatever the hell I want to do on it as anybody else out there. And I race just as hard as I choose to race and want to race, and I race people how I want to be raced. I've always raced with a lot of respect and I'll continue to do so in the future."

Jeff Burton, who was involved in a later crash, confronted Junior after the race, accusing Earnhardt of forcing him into a three-wide situation that pushed him back in the pack and, three laps later, put him in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

"We sat there and debated my ethics and my values and all of those things and ended up agreeing that I'm not a jerk and don't race like a jerk," Earnhardt said. "He was just kind of hot under the collar a little bit."

Burton was long over it by Friday.

"I thought (the Earnhardt-Vickers wreck) was a typical Daytona, Talladega wreck where one guy tries to protect his spot and the other guy needs the spot and you misjudge by six inches and there's a wreck," Burton said.

Earnhardt said he called Vickers early this week to make sure there were no hard feelings.

"He said it was intentional on the television and I wanted to make sure he knew it wasn't intentional, that I didn't have a problem with him and that I wouldn't wreck him intentionally," Earnhardt said. "Just trying to clear that up with him. Me and Vickers have actually been friends for quite a while."

Asked if he talked to any of the other eight drivers who were collected in Sunday's crash, Earnhardt winced and replied: "I wasn't going to call them all up."

But Earnhardt said he finds it a little ironic that he is being called a bad guy on this one.

"I've always been too nice," he said. "And that was the Daytona 500 and I felt like I had the car to win. I felt that way 100 percent. I wanted to go out there and win the race and I felt like if I could get my lap back, I could get it done.

"I was racing everybody as smart as I could, but I was racing as hard as I could. I'm still a good guy, but when I feel like I've got a real good opportunity to win, and I've got to make up a little ground, you've got to race hard. And the Daytona 500 is a little different situation."


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NASCAR star set for soap opera debut

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NASCAR star Jeff Burton will trade in his fire suit and helmet this week for an appearance on ABC soap opera "General Hospital."

The Richard Childress Racing driver is scheduled to visit the set Thursday to take part in scenes with actor Jason Thompson's character, neurosurgeon Dr. Patrick Drake.

Drake is an avid fan of racing on the award-winning series.

"I'm excited about going to the set of General Hospital and taking on a role with Jason," Burton said. "I've been in commercials and was a guest star on a sitcom a couple of years ago, so I'm hoping those appearances prepped me for my soap opera debut. Luckily, I get to play myself and talk racing, which will help take some of the pressure off."

After Thompson teaches Burton the ins and outs of being a soap opera actor, the roles will reverse when Thompson visits Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., to watch Burton in Sunday's Auto Club 500. The driver will treat Thompson to a pace car ride before the race.

Burton's appearance is scheduled to air in mid-March.

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NEW CHASE: Following NASCAR's lead in setting up a 10-race Chase for the championship, voting for the 2009 Most Popular Driver Award will include its own version of the Cup postseason.

Voting has already begun at www.chexmostpopulardriver.com.

The big change comes after the Sept. 23 race at Richmond. The list of drivers will be narrowed to those with the top 10 vote totals, and the vote count will be reset to zero. Fans then have until Nov. 23 to cast ballots once a day.

The winner will be announced in New York in December.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the award for the sixth consecutive year in 2008.

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NEW MAN IN CHARGE: Terry Dale, a longtime International Motor Sports Association official, has been named race director for the 2009 Atlantic Championship developmental series.

Dale has been involved in racing as an official or competitor since 1963.

He was a race director for IMSA since 2005 and was also race director for the IMSA Lites Series in 2007 and 2008. Dale had the same role with the Porsche GT3 Cup Series in 2007 and for the IMSA-sanctioned Formula BMW USA Series the two previous years.

"The Atlantic series has such a great and long history, and it is truly an honor to be associated with it," Dale said. "I'm looking forward to working with the drivers and teams this year in a positive way."

The 12-race Atlantic series gets started March 20 at Sebring International Raceway.


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New Petty team encouraged by Daytona 500 results

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Elliott Sadler finished fifth in the Daytona 500, his best showing in over six months with a payday of more than $515,000.

And he was devastated.

Sadler had raced his way to the front of the field in Sunday's season-opener right when the weather radar showed rain on top of Daytona International Speedway. Only the sky had yet to open up, forcing Sadler to fight to hang onto the lead as the entire field raced Mother Nature.

He couldn't do it, losing the lead to Matt Kenseth a half-lap before the race's final caution. It began to rain minutes after the pass, and Kenseth was declared the winner when NASCAR called it some 20 minutes later.

"If you'd have told me at the beginning of the day I would take a fifth-place finish and lead some laps for the Daytona 500, I probably would have took it," he said quietly afterward. "But to be a half a lap short from being the champion of the Daytona 500 is very emotional to me."

It was a heartbreaking end to the race, but an encouraging start for Richard Petty and what has become his new race team.

An offseason merger with Gillett Evernham Motorsports created the new Richard Petty Motorsports, and the Daytona 500 marked a wonderful start to the partnership. Sadler had a chance to win, AJ Allmendinger was a career-best third and Reed Sorenson was ninth to put three of RPM's drivers in the top 10.

Kahne, the star of the organization, was the only driver to have a bad day, finishing 29th.

But it was the best showing in years for a team with the Petty name. A Petty-owned race car hasn't been to Victory Lane since 1999, and the team was on the verge of collapse before the Gillett merger.

"It's a whole new world the last six months," Petty said this week. "We were looking for something for Petty Enterprises. We really weren't doing what we needed to be doing, and we looked at GEM and talked to them. They were looking to expand, so we said let's just put the two teams together. And so far, it's been pretty good.

"Right out of the box to be able to do as good as we did at Daytona and get all the people to work together, we're really satisfied with the results so far."

It had to be a soothing start to the season after a winter of turmoil for Petty, NASCAR's winningest driver.

A summer sale to private equity firm Boston Ventures failed to put Petty Enterprises on the solid footing to ensure the team, which has been in NASCAR since 1949, could survive the current economic crisis.

Bobby Labonte asked to be released from his contract, longtime sponsor General Mills left the team, and season-ending layoffs were unavoidable.

A merger with Gillett came together in early January, but it wasn't without hiccups.

GEM officials wanted in late December to dump Sadler in favor of Allmendinger, and Sadler gave notice of intent to file an injunction to stop his release. And there was no room in the new company for Kyle Petty, who had run Petty Enterprises for a period and drove for the organization from 1997 through 2008.

The team found a way to keep Sadler and Allmendinger, letting Sadler keep his ride while Allmendinger got an eight-race deal that could expand depending on sponsorship.

There was no solution, though, for Kyle Petty, who briefly visited Daytona the day before the 500 and said he was "crushed" by RPM's decision to use a retro paint scheme on Allmendinger's car. The look matched the car Kyle Petty drove in a 1979 ARCA race at Daytona that was his first career victory.

Petty said busy schedules have prevented him from seeing his son since Christmas, but he understood Kyle Petty's emotions.

"When we did our deal with Boston Ventures, we never had a place for Kyle at Petty Enterprises. He sort of got out of the loop," Richard Petty said. "He talked to his mother. He was really crushed that we didn't include him in (the paint scheme), and I can understand that. We were so busy trying to get our end of the deal done and make it work with a new team that it fell through the crack, and I'm sorry that it did."

Hard feelings aside, Petty is focused on moving on to this weekend's race in California and another strong showing for the new organization.

Sadler knows all eyes are on him as he must show the team made the right decision in keeping him in his ride: "This season I am out to prove that I'm a damn good race car driver who can compete with the best of them," he said.

Sorenson's under pressure to return the No. 43, which Petty piloted to a NASCAR-record 200 career wins, back to Victory Lane. Kahne, meanwhile, needs to get back into the Chase for the championship after a two-year absence.

And Allmendinger is in a race against time to convince a sponsor to sign on for the rest of the season.

"We feel like if he can continue to show promise and do as well as he did at Daytona, then we feel very confident that we'll be able to pick up different sponsors over a period of time to continue running him," Petty said. "If he keeps running like he did at Daytona, I'll just run him out of my pocket because he'll be bringing the money back in."


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