After a multitude of point swaps — as well as name, number and owner changes — the critical top 35 in the Sprint Cup owner standings heading into the 2009 season-opening Daytona 500 barely resembles the same lineup from the end of 2008.

Hendrick Motorsports kicked off its 25th anniversary season Saturday at Daytona International Speedway with a lap around the historic speedway in four specially designed silver race cars.

With little more than 15 minutes remaining in the final practice for the Budweiser Shootout Friday night at Daytona International Speedway, pole-sitter Paul Menard and rookie Scott Speed broke up what had been a quiet evening of testing.

In the second practice for Saturday’s Budweiser Shootout on Friday night, we saw Paul Menard cut a tire down and and Scott Speed had nowhere to go.

PHOTO: CIA STOCK PHOTO

PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion – “I’m not sure if we ran over something or the tire just let loose, but going into one the tire went down and it shot in the corner and went sideways.  We’ll look at it and find out what happened.”

IT LOOKED LIKE THE TIRE WENT DOWN BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENED TO THE CAR.  “Yeah, I was still going straight and it started moving around a little bit, so I started backing out of it.  I didn’t want to jump out of it, but I thought I had it saved and then it just did one last slap and got in the fence.”

IS THE CAR OK OR DO YOU NEED A BACKUP?  “We’re gonna look at it here.  It doesn’t look that bad, really, but you never know once you get all the tires off and put it up on jack stands.  We’ll see.”

UPDATE: FORD RACING SAID THEY WILL REPAIR MENARDS CAR

Rookie Joey Logano certainly looked uncomfortable out there drafting, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch separately received some damage to their machines.  Early in the second session the #31 RCR Jeff Burton car blew an engine, sending the other RCR teams scrambling.

Here’s how they stacked up…

1 48 Jimmie Johnson
2 44 A J Allmendinger
3 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr
4 9 Kasey Kahne
5 14 Tony Stewart
6 11 Denny Hamlin
7 16 Greg Biffle
8 96 Bobby Labonte
9 26 Jamie McMurray
10 18 Kyle Busch

11 82 Scott Speed
12 83 Brian Vickers
13 43 Reed Sorenson
14 31 Jeff Burton
15 6 David Ragan
16 99 Carl Edwards
17 2 Kurt Busch
18 20 Joey Logano
19 24 Jeff Gordon
20 00 David Reutimann
21 19 Elliott Sadler
22 98 Paul Menard
23 17 Matt Kenseth
24 12 David Stremme
25 7 Robby Gordon
26 55 Michael Waltrip
27 29 Kevin Harvick
28 07 Casey Mears