New-look teams dot NASCAR horizon

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick should be the headliners here this week.David Gilliland will be one of the drivers really on the hot seat as the second round of Daytona 500 testing gets under way Monday. That's because last year, even though he'd never even seen this track, he won the pole for the season-opener.That, of course, says a lot about the importance that car owners Robert and Doug Yates put on this Daytona 500.This time around, though, Robert has retired, Doug and new partner Max Jones, from the Jack Roush side of the Ford camp, are running things, and neither Gilliland nor teammate Travis Kvapil have sponsors yet.That's a hot seat for all these guys.The Yates' family aren't the only guys shaking things up. Jay Frye is taking over as general manager for Toyota's Team Red Bull working with Brian Vickers and his new crew chief, Kevin Hamlin (who has nine Cup wins under his belt, including five with Dale Earnhardt Sr.).Frye has been in this sport for more than 15 years, and last season was one of his toughest, when team owner Bobby Ginn found his own optimism about how to succeed in NASCAR was a bit misplaced. Ginn folded his operation; Mark Martin, the anchor, wound up at Dale Earnhardt Inc.; and Frye was on the outside looking in."Red Bull, along with Toyota, has all the necessary tools to compete at a very high level," Frye said, considering his new job, formerly held by Marty Gaunt.Ex-Formula One specialist Guenther Steiner, the team's technical director, has been running the team the last six months, while looking for a new GM.Elton Sawyer, the team's competition director, said that adding Hamlin will be a plus for Vickers: "Finding the right crew chief was pivotal in an effort to restructure the foundation on that team. We need a crew chief with not only the right experience and background to work effectively with our driver and crew, but someone who also shares the same vision for success."Doug Richert held that job the first part of last season, and he and Vickers had some success. But both Red Bull teams suffered with a lack of consistency, hence the shake-ups.Now, though, the Toyota camp has the Joe Gibbs operation on board, and everyone is smiling.Kyle Busch, Gibbs' newest driver, set the pace here last week, and teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin should be strong this week too.For Busch, moving from Rick Hendrick's Chevy operation to Gibbs and Toyota is going smoothly: "We knew the switch was going to be good ... and the reason we went to Toyota was for the pure fact that they want to win races and win championships. That's what we're here to do with them."For what we've got going on with our program (with new equipment), we're proud of the way we came out of the box strong."It's a big deal to come out here and run strong. We want to make sure we give Tony and Denny everything we've learned, so they can keep going on the same path we were."The biggest thing was it was nice to see the Red Bull stuff up there too, and Bill Davis' stuff going fast. I'm not necessarily sure if it's their engines or just the way the Camry's front-end is shaped."Actually, it's part of Toyota's newfound edge. That edge may well be coming from Gibbs' ace chassis specialist, Ronnie Crooks, now working with all the Toyota teams on handling.Busch isn't looking back: "No, no regrets, no nothing. I've got a lot of great friends over there at Hendrick Motorsports still. As a matter of fact, I went over there the other day during my lunch break. Almost missed lunch because I was getting stories from Christmas and New Year's, what all everybody did, catching up on stuff."I'm fortunate to be with another great organization. The (specific) team I'm with (that J.J. Yeley drove for) has struggled a little bit the past couple of years. But at the Atlanta test (of NASCAR's new winged-car), we pretty much won that thing. Then we went to Lakeland (a Florida short track used for NASCAR testing) and we were really good there."And here in Daytona everything's gone well, too. Our single-car runs, we seem to be pretty fast there. Jimmie Johnson was the fastest one for two days, but we actually got to within half a 10th (of a second) of him, so we were proud of that."(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.) (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)