Notes: Green enjoys new role as test driver for HMS (cont'd)

RWI steps up

Team owner Rusty Wallace spent a lot of Sunday sitting inside Turn 1 at Daytona International Speedway in his rental car, watching his two new Chevrolets, the No. 66 driven by his son Steve and the No. 64 driven by new Rusty Wallace Inc. driver David Stremme, turn laps.

S. Wallace

Wallace did everything from listen to exhaust notes to monitor driving lines before heading back to the garage area to debrief with his teams at the end of the day.

"We've really stepped up this year -- but we had to," Wallace said. "Thanks to Atreus Homes and Chevrolet, we're going to run two cars for the entire season; we built all brand-new cars; we hired Harold Holly as our crew chief to work with Steve; we've got three engineers; and we've already been in the wind tunnel five times and we're just getting on the racetrack."

Can-do crew chief

Hand it to former engineer Dave Rogers to have a totally thumbs-up attitude, despite having to have an intricate system in place to figure out who's driving the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota for which he'll serve as crew chief this season.

Tony Stewart will be in the No. 20 nine teams this season, including the Daytona season opener, with JGR development driver Joey Logano in it for 20 races. The balance of the schedule will be handled by Gibbs' two other Sprint Cup drivers, Denny Hamlin (four races) and Kyle Busch (twice).

The icing on the cake came when Rogers worked the last three days at Preseason Thunder with JGR's driver development driver coach, former national Modified champion Mike McLaughlin.

"Under these circumstances, it's fine," Rogers said. "Mike is a good personal friend of mine, so it's fun to work with him. I was Tony Stewart's race engineer for a number of years, so I'm familiar with both drivers for this test and the Daytona race.

"If you look at the driver lineup for the season, I don't have a whole lot to complain about. I get to work with some of the most talented drivers in the business. Most people won't have an opportunity to work with the caliber drivers I will get to this year."

Uncertain future

Nationwide Series veteran Jason Keller, who owns the series' mark for starts with 422, hopes he increases that by at least one at Daytona's Speedweeks. Keller came to Daytona on Sunday to test with CJM Racing, but sponsor uncertainties have both him and the team fluttering like a flag in a high wind.

"Coming down to test there is a little bit of an uncertainty," Keller said. "CJM, we've been looking for a sponsor since the team's inception last April. We had plans to run the first part of the season but when you're looking for sponsors, sometimes sponsors come with drivers [and] I don't know if that's going to work in my favor.

"Some things have popped up of late that could slow my progress down in the Nationwide Series. We'll see how that plays out."

The team initially planned to do the first 10 races of the season to see how its sponsor search played out, and Keller, who made 21 starts in the former Busch Series in 2007 with Brewco Motorsports and the start-up CJM team, has no idea how that will affect his status.

"I wish I knew to the answer to that," Keller said. "It was 10 races but I really don't know. There are some things that could take me out of those 10 but there are some things that could leave me in those 10. I'm really uncertain. I wanted to come down here and test because I want to do everything I can do to prepare for those 10 if there are 10."