Racin' With Russ
By Russell Schmidt

Gentlemen, Start Your 2008 Engines
Monday, January 21, 2008

I know... it's been a long time (couple of months) since we've seen some competitive racing and you're starting to watch reruns of anything connected with wheels turning.

Well, as of this weekend, that's all about to change.

The racing season kicks off in Daytona with the famed Rolex 24 race. For those of you not familiar with this left and right classic, the race takes place on the roadcourse section of Daytona and lasts two trips around the clock or 24 hours.

About 80 assorted hand built sports cars in several divisions will take the green flag on Saturday afternoon and circulate non-stop for the scheduled 24 hours to determine the winner.

The driver's roster of the 47th Rolex 24 is a who's who in racing, from stock car champions Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch along with NASCAR drivers Juan Pablo Montoya, AJ Almendinger and Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti to world class drivers Scott Pruett, Wayne Taylor and a host of international talent.

There will be lost of pitstops, driver changes, late night wrecks, possibly some weather challenges…all jammed into a grueling 24 hour time slot.

FOX and Speed TV are covering the race with extensive live coverage (17 hours) morning, noon and night. I've watched many hours of this event before and Speed does an excellent job of coverage with in-depth interviews and many behind the scenes tid bits.

When the Rolex 24 is over, we'll have more testing to check out followed by the Bud Shootout on Sat., Feb 9th, the Gatorade Duels on Thurs., Feb 14th, which is the precursor to the 'really big show', the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 17th.

Pre-Season Testing

The second week of scheduled Sprint Cup testing wrapped up last week with Dale Earnhardt Jr and Kasey Kahne topping the single car and drafting charts respectively. Other top runners included Dave Blaney, Denny Hamlin and Dario Franchitti. .
Over on the Nationwide (old Busch series) side of pre-season testing, Kyle Busch's Gibbs Toyota Camry topped the charts part of the time as did Johnny Sauter, Tim McCreadie, Carl Edwards, Brad Coleman and David Green.

Nationwide testing continues through Tuesday.

From Rumorville

It appears the Wood Brothers have decided to put veteran racer Bill Elliott behind the wheel for the Daytona 500, then sprinkle driving assignments between Jon Wood and Marcos Ambrose. They did play a pretty good game of inserting Bill into the races when they fell out of the top 35 in points last season.

Don't look now, but NASCAR may be playing with the age restrictions as far as the Sprint Cup series is concerned. The minimum age sits at 18 right now, but there have been several conversations lately in regards to changing the requirements to 21. That certainly would put a crimp in two rising stars looking to break in the Cup ranks this year, namely Joey Lagano and Brad Coleman. What do you think about this idea? Is 18 too young to compete in the 'bigs'? Drop me a line.

Veteran racer Sterling Marlin will be driving for the No. 09 Phoenix Racing Chevy this year in about seven Cup races. Marlin did inform his team however, if they can't pick up the pace (46th fastest) from last week's testing, they might as well save money and stay home as he gives them a slim chance in getting in the field. He also cited how fast the Toyotas were out of the box.

Did you know?

Which Cup drivers that ran a part or full-time schedule in '07 are currently on the outside looking in? Here's the list...
Mike Bliss, Ward Burton, Jeff Green, Kevin Lepage, Tony Raines,
Johnny Sauter, Ken Schrader, David Stremme and Kenny Wallace. For guys like Raines, Sauter and Stremme, they've gotten the short end of the stick for one reason or another, like Stremme being ousted to accommodate ex-open wheeler Franchitti.

That's it for this week. Next week's RWR will discuss the results of Nationwide Series pre-season testing from Daytona, results from the Rolex 24 race and more racing news from around the globe.

Questions? Comments? Contact Russ