Post by dalejrfan on Feb 11, 2006 2:12:26 GMT -5
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - On Saturday night, NASCAR's best drivers get to have a few laughs at 190 mph.
The show is called the Budweiser Shootout, and it's a chance to get a little wild and crazy before getting serious next week for NASCAR's showcase race, the Daytona 500.
The Shootout is a throwback to grass-roots Saturday night racing. It's a 70-lap, 175-mile sprint, divided into two segments, at Daytona International Speedway.
In short, it's Carl Edwards' kind of race - even though this will be his first crack at the Shootout per se.
"I think it'll be a blast," said Edwards, 26, who was the hottest on the tour at the end of last season, surging to finish just 35 points behind champion Tony Stewart, and tied with Greg Biffle for second, in the Nextel Cup standings.
The Shootout is a bonus race that doesn't count in the point standings. It's limited to pole winners from last year's races and to previous winners of the Shootout.
On Saturday night, 21 drivers will start. Seventeen of them got in as 2005 pole winners, and four - Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Ken Schrader and Bill Elliott - are back as previous race winners. Rusty Wallace, who retired at the end of last year, and Terry Labonte, who is running a limited schedule this year, were eligible but chose not to compete.
Schrader will start on the pole by virtue of a drawing - there are no time trials for this race_with Jimmie Johnson, last year's Shootout winner, alongside on the front row.
Stewart, who'll start third, qualified for the event both ways_he won three poles last year, and has won this event twice, in `01 and `02. Plus, Stewart comes in as the most recent winner of a night race at Daytona, the Pepsi 400 here last July.
But Stewart tried to shrug off the favorite's role with some verbal sandbagging.
"Like I've always said, it's a 190-mph chess match," Stewart said, "It's never the same game twice."
Stewart feels more at home on the intermediate-size tracks, road courses and short tracks of the tour_places where carburetor restrictor plates aren't required.
"I'm a checkers player," he said.
He'd have you believe all this riding around at the mercy of the fickle drafts of the high-banked 2.5-mile track, depending on aerodynamic pushes and pulls from other cars, is a little over his head. Never mind that he has emerged as one of the best plate racers among active drivers.
"It still doesn't give you confidence you can go out and win every time here," he said.
Some drivers consider the shootout a bit of a preview for the 500.
"Not necessarily," Stewart said. It's a night sprint as opposed to a daytime 500-miler on Feb. 19, and besides, "this is not the same car we're going to use in the 500, obviously."
Drivers never want to risk their primary cars for the 500 in the Shootout, for fear of destroying them in the craziness.
Ford drivers will glean some knowledge, though, in that this will be the first time in full racing conditions for Ford's new Fusion model, which replaces the Taurus in NASCAR this year.
"It never hurts to get track time at the same track," Matt Kenseth said, "in basically the same car (with regard to bodywork and chassis setup) that you're going to run all week."
The show is called the Budweiser Shootout, and it's a chance to get a little wild and crazy before getting serious next week for NASCAR's showcase race, the Daytona 500.
The Shootout is a throwback to grass-roots Saturday night racing. It's a 70-lap, 175-mile sprint, divided into two segments, at Daytona International Speedway.
In short, it's Carl Edwards' kind of race - even though this will be his first crack at the Shootout per se.
"I think it'll be a blast," said Edwards, 26, who was the hottest on the tour at the end of last season, surging to finish just 35 points behind champion Tony Stewart, and tied with Greg Biffle for second, in the Nextel Cup standings.
The Shootout is a bonus race that doesn't count in the point standings. It's limited to pole winners from last year's races and to previous winners of the Shootout.
On Saturday night, 21 drivers will start. Seventeen of them got in as 2005 pole winners, and four - Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Ken Schrader and Bill Elliott - are back as previous race winners. Rusty Wallace, who retired at the end of last year, and Terry Labonte, who is running a limited schedule this year, were eligible but chose not to compete.
Schrader will start on the pole by virtue of a drawing - there are no time trials for this race_with Jimmie Johnson, last year's Shootout winner, alongside on the front row.
Stewart, who'll start third, qualified for the event both ways_he won three poles last year, and has won this event twice, in `01 and `02. Plus, Stewart comes in as the most recent winner of a night race at Daytona, the Pepsi 400 here last July.
But Stewart tried to shrug off the favorite's role with some verbal sandbagging.
"Like I've always said, it's a 190-mph chess match," Stewart said, "It's never the same game twice."
Stewart feels more at home on the intermediate-size tracks, road courses and short tracks of the tour_places where carburetor restrictor plates aren't required.
"I'm a checkers player," he said.
He'd have you believe all this riding around at the mercy of the fickle drafts of the high-banked 2.5-mile track, depending on aerodynamic pushes and pulls from other cars, is a little over his head. Never mind that he has emerged as one of the best plate racers among active drivers.
"It still doesn't give you confidence you can go out and win every time here," he said.
Some drivers consider the shootout a bit of a preview for the 500.
"Not necessarily," Stewart said. It's a night sprint as opposed to a daytime 500-miler on Feb. 19, and besides, "this is not the same car we're going to use in the 500, obviously."
Drivers never want to risk their primary cars for the 500 in the Shootout, for fear of destroying them in the craziness.
Ford drivers will glean some knowledge, though, in that this will be the first time in full racing conditions for Ford's new Fusion model, which replaces the Taurus in NASCAR this year.
"It never hurts to get track time at the same track," Matt Kenseth said, "in basically the same car (with regard to bodywork and chassis setup) that you're going to run all week."