RWI trying to become a top-tier Nationwide team (cont'd)

The younger Wallace ended the test fifth on the single-car cumulative speed chart and 10th on the drafting chart. By the final afternoon, when all but six of the 40 teams that tested had left Daytona, Wallace and Stremme continued to draft together working on set-ups, including going out on one last run with literally minutes left in the session.

It left Holly highly optimistic.

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"I'm tickled to death, because we unloaded the first day as a top-10 car, including all the cars that had already been there for two days," Holly said. "The [ECRT] engine package we've got is just phenomenal and the guys at RWR worked extremely hard -- until 10 or 11 at night several nights -- to get these bodies right. They're Cup-quality cars."

Wallace wrecked the car the team plans to use as its Speedweeks primary on Monday afternoon when he misjudged his braking trying to get onto pit road from the garage area and crashed into a fence post, destroying the car's nose.

The team's commitment was shown when they hired a local flatbed operator to take the car to a chassis shop in North Carolina, where Holly said it had a new front clip installed on Tuesday and would be ready to go by Friday of the same week it was wrecked.

"It was a super-fast car, and I'm confident those guys can put it back just like it was," Holly said. "Both cars were pretty fast cars, but the car we crashed seemed to be a little bit more stable, and I feel like it will draft better."

The veteran crew chief, who last year worked in the Cup Series with Haas CNC Racing, said he saw only good things ahead.

"Most people will tell you it's a lot easier to slow 'em down than it is to speed 'em up," Holly said. "You definitely don't have to speed [Steve] up -- he's super-fast, but he's a very, very smart kid and he's got a great feel for a racecar.

"With him and David working together, we learned quite a bit about what we're going to need for race packages. David and Steve really worked together awesome and the guys from the 64 and the 66 really worked great together, too.

"David's got a lot of experience and a lot of good leadership about him, and it was just a great test."

Rusty Wallace hit a point last season where his frustration was almost too much to bear. He knew something had to change -- and he hopes the changes make a difference in 2008.

"It was tough sitting up in that [ESPN] booth, watching [Steve] run good and then crashing," Wallace said. "Neil Goldberg [producer] would come across my headset saying 'oh, that was Steve.' I heard that a lot.

"But then there were high points, like how well he ran at Kentucky [before crashing], and that gets you all jacked back up. And at Homestead, he passed [Matt] Kenseth and he passed [Denny] Hamlin and he's up to third, and then on a restart he gets high and hits the wall.

"But I saw a lot of speed. And over the winter months, I saw him mature so much more -- and then I got a guy like Holly that really knows how to control Steve. But there was a time when I was saying, 'you know, this costs too much money, I'm not making any money and why am I doing this?'

"I'm doing it because of my kid and I'm doing it because I love the sport and I'm doing it because I want to be a car owner, OK? And I have fun at it -- [but] there were a lot of times when I was not having fun."

Wallace isn't immune to the sport's frustration and said the worst aspect of being an owner was "constantly having to find that money."

"I'm out there watching those guys with the 21 car [Richard Childress Racing's 2006 championship team] and they've got financing for 18 [races out of 35]," Wallace said. "Carl Edwards has got financing for all the races except 13. Everybody's trying to find money.

"And NASCAR's trying to put this Car of Tomorrow in for 2009 and I hope and pray to God that it's delayed to '10 -- because you've got a guy like me who's put all new cars in and to think you've got to can everything at the end of the year is just devastating.

"Those types of things make you want to quit. But I see a bunch of happy guys out there and the kid keeps getting better and better. He took off with a lot of popularity because he was so fast -- but he's worked himself down into this ditch with all the crashing.

"So you don't leave him sitting down in that hole -- you've got to pull him out with the best cars and the best of everything and hope he can power it right back up to the top and get noticed."

The owner said he hopes that starts at Daytona next month.

"When I leave Speedweeks I'm hoping I take home two cars not crashed and we've had two solid runs," Wallace said. "My goals are always top-10s, you know? Obviously, Stremme's got more experience than Steve does, so we're expecting big things out of Stremme."

That's no less than what the veteran of 74 Cup starts with Chip Ganassi Racing expects. The last time Stremme, 30, raced an RWR car he led all but one lap to win the Michigan ARCA RE/MAX Series event in June 2006. (Continued)