It's Daytona, Baby!
DAYTONA - It's the official opening of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Teams took to the Daytona oval yesterday (Jan 12) for the first testing session of the 2012 racing season. With engineering changes mandated by NASCAR, teams are scrambling to implement and test their race-cars under the new rules. This is the season of Fuel Injection and Danica Patrick. It's the countdown to the Great American Race.
With half of day two practice under their collective seat-belts two drivers standout as the fastest of the day and they both come out of the Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota camp. Martin Truex Jr. and new team driver Clint Bowyer both eclipsed with identical speeds of 204.722 mph (43.962 sec) to sit atop the speed chart. They were nearly a half second faster than the Petty team drivers, Marcos Ambrose and Aric Almirola who also matched speeds of 203.142 (44.304 sec).
Martin Truex Jr. and Clint Bowyer - Michael Waltrip Racing
Both teams were locked into the two-car tandem style of racing and saw much faster speeds than cars doing single runs to work on their qualifying setup. The top four speeds blew away Thursday afternoon's best lap of 202.402 set by Kyle Busch out of the Joe Gibbs camp.
NASCAR, in an effort to break up the unpopular two-car tandems seen at Daytona and Talladega.over the last couple of years, mandated a couple of overnight engineering changes.
Sprint Cup crew chiefs were told after Thursday's session that the size of the restrictor plates would be increased from 29/32nds of an inch to 15/16ths of an inch effectively adding about 25 horsepower. They also dictated that the size of the front grille inlets be reduced accordingly. This would make their cars more prone to overheating.
Here are the speed charts following Friday morning's session.
Only 32 teams showed up in Daytona for the pre-season practice
You will have to throw out last years program guide. Teams, drivers and cars have played a bit of musical chairs since the Tony Stewart show in Homestead. This graphic might help.
Let's go racin' boys! (And girls)
Follow Technorati