BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Daytona Beach, Fla. — The NASCAR marketing machine has done its best to convey excitement with its Preseason Thunder moniker for Daytona International Speedway testing. However, the fact of the matter is that for the drivers there’s very little to be excited about during a DIS test session.

Jeff Burton compares DIS single car runs to “acupuncture in the eyeballs.”

“[Wednesday], this is what I did,” began Burton. “I got in the car at 9:10 [a.m.]. I got out of the car at noon. I got in the car at 12:45 [p.m.] and got back out of the car about 3:45 [p.m]. I got in another car, got out of that one and back in the primary car and got out at 5 [p.m]. So I spent seven hours in the seat. Some people might say, 'Wow, that's exciting at 185 miles an hour.' It's not exciting here. You can just about go to sleep.”

Asked why he didn’t have a substitute driver, Burton replied with a bit of a miffed look on his face. “Because this is where my guys are. I’m not going to not be with my guys — that’s just as important as anything we do with the car.”

SERVING UP A PLATE
According to Winston Cup Director, John Darby many of the pieces that NASCAR uses to control the cars at DIS will be just as they were when the tour last ran a restrictor plate race, which was October at Talladega Superspeedway.

The cars will run a 7/8-inch plate as well as the smaller fuel cell, according to Darby. The restrictor plate, used to slow the cars from what might well be a 230 mph lap, if the cars ran open motors, should hold the DIS laps to about 185 mph. Atlanta, Texas, Michigan and California tracks will all boast pole speeds quite a bit quicker than the pole speed for the 2003 Daytona 500.

The fuel cells once again will be in the 12-gallon neighborhood, versus the 22 gallons allowed at open motor tracks. The smaller cells, which led to pit stops during the close of October’s EA Sports 500, will be used, again. This will give NASCAR more information for possible future changes in the size of the fuel cans for the next plate race.

Speaking about the fuel cells Darby told TFR, “Daytona’s a little different track length. We had an idea [with the smaller fuel cells] and only ran it one race. We’d like to watch it more than that [before we do anything with the cells].”

Different track lengths not withstanding, the race is still 500 miles long and the stops that came with eight laps to go at Talladega might come with two laps to go at Daytona.

Adding to the mileage confusion is creative engineering by some teams of the 12-gallon fuel cell. You might recall after the October 2001 Talladega race, the first plate race run with the smaller fuel cells, one team member boasted to TFR of a 17-gallon fill during one pit stop.

PENSKE THREAT?
According to those who are watching the Penske Racing South swap from Ford to Dodge sheetmetal there should be a good deal of concern.

There’s no doubt that Roger Penske’s motormen were hard at work with P7 Dodge engine development during the winter. Rusty Wallace told the media that the motor he had in his test car in this week’s session made as much power as his Ford motor did in last year’s race. This claim makes the head spin as the gains in plate motors come with experience. Since the Penske crew has less than six or eighth months with the new Dodge pieces it’s only a matter of time before the heat increases under the hoods of Wallace’s and Ryan Newman’s cars.

“Nobody is showing what they have,” Doug Yates told teamfordracing.com at Daytona this week. “So it’s kind of hard to say. I felt, just looking at our program that we made good gains from the first two plate races [in 2002] to the end of the season. We’ve continued to gain on that somewhat over the winter.

“Everybody’s had the same thing for so long. No rules changes. No new manifolds and NASCAR’S locked us down on so many parts that I think the [horsepower] gains come in ones and twos. If you have a winter where you legitimately pick up four horsepower or five horsepower you’ve probably done a pretty good job.”

According to one engineman the open Penske motors could now be pulling as much as 30 hp more than their Ford motors. Reliability could be a problem, but with the new and improved pieces in the clean sheet, race-only Dodge P7 engine the Penske drivers might be a handful in time.

Penske’s head engine builder, Larry Wallace, left the team in December and has opened his own shops, again. Penske bought Wallace’s engine building shop several years ago, for a tidy sum, and put him in charge of Penske Racing Engines. The relationship lasted about four years, but Wallace had wanted out of the arrangement for at least a year. TFR’s sources now say that Wallace is doing a lot of fishing, but not kicking the world’s doors down looking for work.There is some speculation that Wallace might be prevented from working in the industry due to non-compete language in his contract with Penske.

Steve Allen, who last worked on Dodge engines with Mike Ege in early 2002, has left the business altogether and is now working in a foreign car dealership. One noted engine builder wondered how long before Allen tired of working on stock engines; and expects to see Allen back in the garage before the end of the year.

In an aside, Ray Evernham still doesn’t have a hot motor setup that he can throw at the field. This could get embarrassing for Evernham, as he’s the Dodge factory team owner. Evernham did lose the Jim Smith engine business to Ege’s operation after one flat-leased motor too many drove Smith to distraction in 2002.

TOYOTA DOPE
TFR has learned that the new Toyota stock car development shops are located in a sprawling new campus in Patterson, Calif. Those in the southern California shops are busily working toward having a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series truck on the track in ’04 or ’05 and a Winston Cup car in possibly ’06 or ’07.