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Practice Answers Questions?

Today is the last day of sanctioned practice before the NASCAR Sprint Cup series heads to Daytona to kick off the 2008 season. With the final laps running at California Speedway, teams have hit the pavement with the new-generation car at all types of track configurations on the Sprint Cup schedule. They should have plenty of data to sift through as they try to keep up with last year?s dominant team, Hendrick Motorsports. Many stories are yet to be answered in this coming season and the practice sessions have given some hints to where the answers lie.

Junior?s Move To Hendricks
Checking out the practice charts, Junior seems to be fitting right in with his Hendrick Motorsports teammates. After most sessions at all three tracks, the four teams could be found grouped together on the final printout of fastest times. Junior did top all drivers who tested at Daytona with the fastest single car run, not really a surprise. There will be pressure to win right away, as Junior wants to prove that his decision to leave his father?s team was the right one. A win in the 50th annual Daytona 500 is defiantly in the cards and would be a storybook start to the season. If that first win with Hendrick doesn?t come quickly, it will be interesting to see how the two Juniors, Earnhardt and Eury, react.

Kyle Busch?s Move To Gibbs and Gibbs Switch To Toyota
The biggest question regarding Kyle?s move to Joe Gibbs racing will be played out during the season. Last year Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin had their much publicized crash while leading at Daytona, causing Joe Gibbs to come back and mediate the squabble. Now throw the volatile Busch into the mix and who knows what can happen. Maybe it?s a good thing that Gibbs has retired from football and has returned to the shop. His wisdom may be needed again.

The switch from Chevrolet to Toyota had many wondering if Gibbs had made the jump a season too soon. Looking at the practice charts from all three tracks, it looks like they knew what they were doing. Not only have the Gibbs teams been at the top of the list of almost every practice session, other Toyota teams have joined them there, a huge change from last year. Toyota looks to make a huge improvement this year and having the Gibbs teams in the camp will do nothing but help.

DEI Without Junior
The biggest story to come out of DEI was the flap over missing Junior memorabilia during the media tour. At first Junior didn?t care, then he did, then DEI explained that they needed to move stuff around to accommodate the media and everything has been put back.

In the meantime, things were somewhat quiet on the track. At Daytona, all of the DEI teams posted speeds around the middle of the pack with the highlight of Regan Smith running the fifth fasted lap during drafting sessions. In Las Vegas, things started the same with drivers posting speeds in the mid to slower end of the pack but, Mark Martin (4th), Martin Truex, Jr (11th) and Paul Menard (20th) rallied in the final practice to place in the top 20 speeds. The first day at California continued the trend with Truex (7th), Menard (10th), and Regan Smith (19th) posting their better runs of the day during the final evening session.

More Stories
Other interesting practice notes include: the Toyota teams at the top of the charts after the Daytona practice sessions, Carl Edwards toping a couple of sessions at Las Vegas and California, Roush remains fast at California with Edwards, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle and Jamie McMurray all in the top five of the first day?s evening practice session.

Testing normally proves nothing as teams may or may not be putting their best foot forward. But this year, with the importance of getting the best out of the new-generation car, teams can not afford to play games. Either way, all will be told soon as the 2008 season is upon us in two weeks.

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