This week at Daytona International Speedway, there will be plenty of new paint schemes to get used to.

The one that will be the most interesting to see, however, will likely belong to the No. 29 Chevrolet of Kevin Harvick out of the Richard Childress Racing stable.

For the first time since 1987, RCR will travel to the season's biggest race with a car that's not black and doesn't carry that familiar GM Goodwrench logo on the hood.

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The car is now Shell yellow, and the numbers are not silver, they're red.

Shell replaced GM Goodwrench as the No. 29 car's primary sponsor at the end of the 2006 season, and Daytona is the first time anyone will have a chance to watch a new era unfold.

"With the caliber of Shell and the caliber of company that it is, for us to be able to represent them, it's quite an honor," said team owner Richard Childress, who has been a Chevrolet loyalist for his entire career as a driver and car owner. "With Shell's 13,000 stores in the U.S., a lot of the things they are going to do in their activation program are going to help not only RCR and Kevin Harvick; it's going to help NASCAR as a whole."

John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Company, was eager to snap up RCR last year when Goodwrench announced it would not be coming back as a primary sponsor.

"When the opportunity presented itself, my conversation with our head of retail was, 'Let's grab this opportunity. This is a chance to really help change the game for Shell in this country by being in the nation's most closely followed sport,'" Hofmeister said. "To be with Richard Childress Racing, which has such a reputation for efficient, effective management and real success, Daytona really kicks it off for us."

Shell made the move back to NASCAR after some stellar success in Formula One racing, with Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari team. The move, Hofmeister said, was a no-brainer.

"Getting back into NASCAR is very exciting for us," Hofmeister said. "Michael Schumacher and Ferrari have been tremendous partners for Shell in Formula One, and while F1 is extremely popular and we've gotten great brand mileage out of that association, it doesn't get the attention in the United States that it gets elsewhere. This opportunity with RCR is really the best of both worlds for us, to have F1 all over the rest of the world and NASCAR in the United States."

Shell has 13,000 retail locations across America, and part of the company's sponsorship of RCR is the branding of the 29 car and Harvick at every one of them.

"Currently, if you stop in any of the 13,000 Shell stations in the U.S., you'll see the image of NASCAR, the 29 car and Kevin Harvick present for everyone to see," Hofmeister said.

"Six million people a day go to Shell, as best we can count, and those 6 million people have the chance to look at that image, and we sell gasoline in just about every state."

There's also a gas card promotion surrounding the No. 29 team.

"We're off and running with our gas card, which has the 29 car and the Shell and Pennzoil logo right there in the middle of it," Hofmeister said. "We're at 3 million and counting on those gas cards, and this means that somebody has a free tank of gas, or a partial tank of gas, and when they get it, the 29 car is staring them right in the eye."

That kind of exposure already, before ever turning a wheel in competition, is why NASCAR is such a draw for major corporations.

While Shell is keen on the marketing aspects of NASCAR, there's also the sense that it's a test bed for lubricants, which is a major component of Shell's overall business.

"Many people think we're just gas and oil, but when it comes to NASCAR, we are nanotechnologists," Hofmeister said. "We are getting right down to the molecular level of what is in the lubricant and the additives that are part of the lubricant that enable this molecular interaction to be on the leading edge.

"This is a process of sustained experimentation, and there's not a more difficult circumstance under which you're testing your molecules than NASCAR racing, with the sustained temperatures and stress."

Childress, who recently spent more than $2 million to upgrade his company's measuring technology, is banking on that technology partnership as well.

"We have 27 engineers at RCR and more than 400 employees," he said. "Technology is a very expensive business. We just spent $2 million on measuring equipment, and we are already working with their development engineers on lubricants.

"Things have changed a lot since I started my career in that $20 racecar."

Asked what his plans were for the upcoming Speedweeks marathon at Daytona, Hofmeister put it this way: "I want to meet and greet as many people as I can, and win the race."

That's sponsorship in a nutshell.