DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The new NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season hasn’t even started yet and AJ Allmendinger is already turning competitive laps at Daytona International Speedway.

For the second straight year, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series star is participating in Daytona KartWeek, which showcases hundreds of karters from across the country in World Karting Association races.

“We’ve had three off weekends now so I’m bored,” said Allmendinger, who drives for Richard Petty Motorsports. “I had to get away from the house. It’s time to go racing. As soon as Christmas is over, it’s time to go racing.”

[nggallery id=47]

Two different courses showcase two different series during Daytona KartWeek – the George Kugler/Bridgestone Manufacturer’s Cup Series that competes on the sprint track located in Turns 3 and 4 and the Dirt World Championships on the quarter-mile dirt track outside Turns 1 and 2.

Daytona KartWeek is the beginning of what will be a two-month stretch of events for Allmendinger at the “World Center of Racing.”

“I think I might buy a condo or something here in Daytona,” Allmendinger joked. “I just love karting. I love competing. I use to be really good at it and I’m not so good at anymore and now I need to get better at it again. I feel fortunate enough being a Sprint Cup driver and doing something that I love to do every Sunday that I have the opportunity to have the equipment and have fun again and enjoy it.”

Allmendinger didn’t enjoy last year’s Daytona KartWeek as much as he wanted. He struggled on the track and packed up early and headed back home to North Carolina. This year, he comes ready for what is a competitive field that also includes 2010 Daytona 500 champion Jamie McMurray.

He recently switched over to Arrows go-karts and he has longtime friend Tim Pappas, who Allmendinger worked with at Paul Tracy Karting, assisting him in the garage.

“We’re better but we’re still not where we want to be,” Allmendinger said. “There are some fast kids here. Last year, we were so out in left field. I wasn’t even competitive. It wasn’t even fun. At least I feel like we’re in the ball game to where we can have some fun racing against some fast guys and at least contend for a decent spot. We still have work to do.”

As Allmendinger has been racing on his kart, he was also able to see the new racing surface around the legendary 2.5-mile tri-oval. He will get his first laps on the new asphalt during NASCAR Preseason Thunder testing on Jan. 20-22.

“It looks smooth,” Allmendinger said. “I’ve heard great reviews about it. It looks really cool. I read about the testing. It looks like it’s going to be a hell of a race. It’s basically going to be Talladega but a lot narrower. We’re going to still think we can go five wide but I don’t think it really holds that. Everybody that I’ve talked said it’s so smooth and it’s going to be a great race. I look forward to Jan. 20 and we can get to go test.”

* NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Teams To Test January 20-22 At Daytona International Speedway
* NASCAR Preseason Thunder Fan Fest At Daytona Coincides On Jan. 21-22

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Oct. 9, 2010) – Daytona International Speedway’s three-day NASCAR Sprint Cup Series test, known as NASCAR Preseason Thunder, is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 20 through Saturday, Jan. 22. Sunday, Jan. 23 is the rain date.
The 2011 edition of NASCAR Preseason Thunder will help teams acclimate to the new pavement, plus speed their preparation for the 53rd Daytona 500 on Feb. 20 – the series’ traditional season-opener.
The repaving project – only the second in track history and first since 1978 – began immediately after the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event on July 3.
“This allows everyone an equal opportunity to work on their setups and get everything in order leading up to Speedweeks and the running of the Daytona 500,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice president of competition. “Additionally, it gives the teams the chance to get accustomed to the new pit road and the added run-off areas on the backstretch. We’re excited about the new surface and believe it will only enhance the racing experience at Daytona.”
All NASCAR Preseason Thunder sessions begin at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m., weather permitting. Each includes a lunch break from noon until 1 p.m.

Fans seeking to rev up their new year can do so at the NASCAR Preseason Thunder Fan Fest at Daytona – the companion event to the January test. Along with watching NASCAR Preseason Thunder track activity from Daytona’s Sprint FANZONE, fans can enjoy two Fan Fest sessions – from 5-9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 21 and from 5-7 p.m., on Saturday, Jan. 22.
Driver question-and-answer and autograph sessions are planned. Tickets for the NASCAR Preseason Thunder Fan Fest are $20. Fans also can watch each day’s testing at no cost from a section of the Oldfield Grandstands.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming the stars of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series to our new racing surface in January,” said Joie Chitwood, Daytona International Speedway president. “NASCAR Preseason Thunder will be an important test session for all teams as they acquire data from their first laps on the new asphalt at Daytona.
“The test is also going to serve as a great opportunity for fans to interact with their favorite drivers in advance of Speedweeks 2011 and the 53rd annual Daytona 500.”
Teams from the NASCAR Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series are expected to receive extra practice time during Speedweeks to get acclimated to the track’s new surface.

Fast Facts

What: NASCAR Preseason Thunder testing for the 2011 Daytona 500

Where: Daytona International Speedway.

Track Layout: 2.5-mile tri-oval.

When: Thursday, Jan. 20 through Saturday, Jan. 22.

Times: 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Who: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams.

Photos usually say it best, in fact you know the old saying, a picture is worth a….so here’s 19,000 words!

[nggallery id=46]

Photo Credit: NASCARMedia

TODD GORDON NAMED AS CREW CHIEF FOR CHAMPIONSHIP-WINNING PENSKE RACING NO. 22 NATIONWIDE SERIES TEAM

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (December 27, 2010) – Penske Racing has announced that experienced crew chief Todd Gordon has been named as the crew chief for the defending NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) championship-winning No. 22 Discount Tire/Ruby Tuesday Dodge team for 2011.

Gordon, who most recently served as race engineer for Diamond-Waltrip Racing in the Nationwide Series, will take over the team that earned Penske Racing’s first NASCAR championship last season with driver Brad Keselowski claiming six wins, five poles and a series single-season record 26 top-five finishes. Gordon will be paired with Keselowski as the No. 22 team will once again pursue the Nationwide Series title in 2011.

“The chance to join Penske Racing and lead the championship-winning team with Brad next season is the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Gordon. “The No. 22 Dodge team had a special year in 2010 and I’m looking forward to coming on board and hopefully building on that level of success as we move forward.”

Gordon, who graduated from Clemson University with a mechanical engineering degree, has served as a crew chief several times throughout his 12-year career in racing. Prior to working with Diamond-Waltrip Racing, he was crew chief at Baker Curb Racing in the Nationwide Series and he also helped build the CJM Racing Nationwide Series program from the ground up, serving as both team manager and crew chief. This will also mark Gordon’s second stint as crew chief of the No. 22 NNS car as he actually led the “double deuce” team when it was part of PPC Racing in 2006.

“We are excited to welcome Todd to Penske Racing,” said Michael Nelson, Vice President of Operations for Penske Racing. “With his strong engineering background and experience as a crew chief in the Nationwide Series, he will be a great addition to the No. 22 Discount Tire/Ruby Tuesday Dodge team.”

Paul Wolfe, who helped lead the No. 22 team to the NNS championship this season, was named recently as crew chief of Penske Racing’s No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge in the NASCAR Cup Series beginning in 2011, which created the opportunity for Gordon.

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

One of the most stress-inducing undertakings in racing is a track repaving project.

If you do it right, it can really cause your stock to rise with fans and drivers alike. But if you happen to get it wrong, you can literally turn a time-honored tradition upside down. And as we all know, in racing, upside down is bad.

So surely everyone, from NASCAR and track officials to competitors and fans, has been obsessively muttering, “Please don’t mess it up; please don’t mess it up,” as the sport’s most famous venue, Daytona International Speedway, underwent a massive repaving project during the latter months of 2010. The project began on July 5, immediately following the Coke Zero 400 weekend, and concluded on Dec. 10, as an actual checkered flag waved over the departure of the Lane Construction paving crew.

Repaving projects are tricky. Just like people, racetracks develop individual and unique personalities as they mature. Stripping a track back down to its bare dirt would be comparable to being stripped of your skin and being reconstructed from the skeleton outward. Your basic bone structure would be the same, but chances are good that the end result could look very different than the original. When dealing with Daytona, NASCAR’s most iconic track, this would be simply unacceptable.

DIS needed some sprucing up, to put it mildly. The World Center of Racing was last paved in 1978. To get some perspective, that was before NASCAR Sprint Cup Series superstars Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne (to name a few) were even born.

The impetus for the project, which had been scheduled for 2012, was a pothole between Turns 1 and 2, which caused a delay of over two hours during the 2010 Daytona 500, the biggest, most highly-publicized race of the year.

Although Robin Braig, president of the speedway when the repaving work began, said,” We don’t want to paint the whole house when all we have to do is a little touch up,” this turned out to be much more than a mere makeover. Temporary cosmetic work would not suffice. Nothing less than a complete facelift would restore the track’s smooth complexion, which had become pitted and rough after years of hard racing.

How do you go about reconstructing a legend? With precision, respect and a whole lot of asphalt. According to information released by the track, the five-month paving project, which in addition to the racing surface included pit road, the apron and the skid pads, required 50,000 tons of asphalt. Fifty truckloads of concrete were poured for the new pit stalls. All in all, over 1.4 million square feet of paving was completed.

The time had come at last to check the results, so Goodyear scheduled a tire test, which was held on Dec. 15 and 16.

How important is Daytona International Speedway to NASCAR?

Let me put it to you this way. Generally, when Goodyear visits a track to conduct a pre-event tire test, the company invites one team from the each of the four auto manufacturers – Chevy, Ford, Dodge and Toyota — to participate. Information is collected from each of the four and taken back to the plant where a specific tire compound is created for each individual track.

But for the 2011 Daytona 500, four drivers just didn’t seem to be enough. So 18 showed up.

Individually and collectively, they drove high and low, fast and slow on the smooth new surface. Then, as drivers are wont to do, they said exactly what they thought about it.

“It’s a new attitude,” said 2004 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kurt Busch. “You look at it and you smile, going, ‘Hey, they did the best job they could, we got the best product out there, now let’s go and race …’ Looks like it got a great facelift.”
“I think they did a lot like what happened at Darlington. When they redid Darlington, they kept Darlington. They kept it wide, didn’t change the transitions. They kept the character of the racetrack,” said Richard Childress Racing driver Jeff Burton. “I think the same thing happened here. It’s much smoother, has a tremendous amount more grip, but it’s still Daytona. They didn’t try to change the banking from the bottom to the top, do all that stuff. They just kept Daytona and put pavement on it. I’m glad that’s what they did.

“Daytona … has its own history, its own heritage. It’s entrenched in what our sport is all about. So keeping Daytona Daytona was a hundred percent the right thing to do.”

The 2000 Cup Series champ Bobby Labonte and defending Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray concurred with their fellow drivers, all of whom predicted close, competitive racing come February. “It’s going to be a lot tighter packs … around Daytona than I’ve ever seen. So it’s going to be more Talladega-type, really close restrictor plate racing,” McMurray said.

The high line is often popular at Daytona, but on Dec. 15 and 16, only the bottom line really mattered, and the tire test told the tale. The verdict?

They didn’t mess it up.

The 53rd running of the ‘Great American Race’ will be held on February 20, 2011. For more information, visit www.daytonainternationalspeedway.com.

The opinions expressed in this articles are solely those of the author and not this website.