Wise, McDowell preparing for possible Cup shot in '08 (cont'd)

Added Wise: "My whole life, I've raced for every opportunity I've ever had. My parents didn't have any money, I never had any big sponsors to bring along, I never had anything like that. I've had to race for any position I've ever been in. So in realty for me, it's no different than what my whole racing career has been. I've had to race and get results and get along with the teams I've run for and build good relationships my whole life to get to this point. I've had teammates I've raced in situations for, and you just do your best and hopefully your talents exceed everyone else's."

From a team perspective, that competition may not be a bad thing. Again Norris points to Roush, where Kurt Busch seemed to leapfrog Greg Biffle into the Nextel Cup circuit, spurring his teammate on. And the No. 00 won't be the only seat open at Michael Waltrip Racing in the foreseeable future. The team owner is 44, and isn't going to race forever. Whoever doesn't get the No. 00 may be first in line to drive the No. 55.

"We sat down with both of them," Norris said, "and said, 'Look guys, this is not an either-or situation. We want both of you. The 00 will be open. We want to do some Busch and Truck racing. And Michael is going to race for some period of time, whether it's two, three, four, five years, however long he races, and we need to have that next guy.' We'd rather groom our own. [Jack] Roush, for all the things you could say good or bad about the man, he's done a nice job developing his own people with Biffle and Busch and [Carl] Edwards and even [Matt] Kenseth."

That message was received loud and clear. "I know Michael is not going to spend much more than another year or two in the 55, so if I could perform at a Busch level and get some consistency instead of basically just being thrown into Cup, that wouldn't be a bad deal for me," Wise said. "I just want to race. I'm going to go run a midget this weekend because I don't have anything else to do. As long as I have a racecar and food on the table, I really couldn't care less. I just want to race and enjoy every moment of it."

Then there's the matter of the vehicle that Wise and McDowell are vying to drive. Norris said Domino's and Burger King, which are splitting primary sponsorship of that car this year, will not be back in the same capacity in 2008. Although the team is still searching for sponsorship, Waltrip has vowed that the car will not go away. And what happens if sponsorship is found, Reutimann steps out of the vehicle, and neither McDowell or Wise are ready to make the move up?

"We will be able to fill the seat until they get ready, I think," Norris said. The fill-in could be "some guys who lost rides, or might be in the Truck Series right now and want a couple of shots at it. Toyota has some great veteran drivers in the Truck Series that we could probably lean on to run a few races if we had to. As long as everybody knows that these two kids are the ones taking priority, because we're trying to get them ready."