DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- "Quit" doesn't exist in Rusty Wallace's vocabulary -- even if thinking about it occupied some of his time last season.

So when the NASCAR owner, ESPN broadcaster, business executive and racer's father's landscape turned upside down as his son headed for a 19th-place finish in the Busch Series' driver standings and 30th in owner points, he knew there was only one solution.

Wallace vs. Fence

Steve Wallace misjudged his brakes and hit a fence damaging his primary car on Monday at Nationwide Preseason Thunder testing.

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That was to change. And while at Daytona International Speedway for Nationwide Series Preseason Thunder last weekend, the namesake of Rusty Wallace Racing laid out just what he had done.

"I'll use the analogy of an airplane," said Wallace, an avid pilot. "You climb to a certain altitude and all of a sudden, it just can't go no more. It was the same with the race team -- we were only going to go so far unless you do something."

Wallace said Atreus Homes' founder and CEO Jon Been came to him and wanted Wallace to field two cars in 2008, and that was the start.

"We made big changes," Wallace said. "I've got better talent, better people -- we basically put another 100 horsepower in that airplane and got up over that hump -- because if we're going to compete with these Cup guys, we've got to find some money and we've got to find some engineering."

Wallace hired former Busch Series champion crew chief Harold Holly to work on the No. 66 car with his son, Steve Wallace, 20; in conjunction with veteran RWR chief mechanic Steve Darne, who'll oversee the team's second car, the No. 64 to be driven by 2003 Busch Series rookie of the year David Stremme, development driver Chase Austin and on the three road courses, Max Papis.

The owner is trying to engineer a deal to transfer the owner points from one of the top-30 teams from last season that disbanded for 2008 to his No. 64, to lock it into the first five races this season, but he wasn't ready to announce that.

RWR switched manufacturers, from Dodge to Chevrolet and engaged the Childress/Earnhardt engine collaboration, ECRT, to build their engines. Wallace added a 20,000-square-foot fabrication shop, bumping his complex's total size to 60,000 square feet and he added personnel.

"Chevrolet brought us the wind tunnel and seven-post development and Richard Childress brought us proven engines -- I almost consider them an arm of our team," Wallace said. "I hired a lot of guys from Ginn Racing, when they went out of business [last summer], so we've got a Nationwide team that looks like a Cup team."

Wallace raved about the support he's received from Chevrolet.

"Last year, we were in the wind tunnel three times; that was it," Wallace said. "This year, we've been in the wind tunnel five times and hadn't even been on the racetrack yet -- both our speedway stuff and our downforce stuff.

"Chevrolet will call us up and say 'three hours of tunnel time just popped up -- are you prepared?' A lot of teams can't react that quickly, but we're ready."

Wallace said he had no engineers on staff until almost the end of last season, and now he has three. He struggled to find a crew chief that could throttle and guide his fast, but erratic son; and feels like he's done that with Holly, who had a record-breaking championship season with Jeff Green in 2000.

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.

"I saw how good Rusty's organization was, and how good his equipment was, then," Stremme said. "But what's really neat is this year, he's got a lot of great people there, the structure's changed and the thing is, he wants to win races and he'll give you whatever you need.

"We've just got to get everybody in place and get the chemistry going. With myself and the experience I have, I think we'll be able to get Steve [better]. He's fast, but I used to be in his shoes."

Steve Wallace said he was excited, given his lack of experience at this level, to have a veteran teammate to compare set-ups and ideas with. The Daytona test, particularly on Tuesday, showed how well it could work.

"I learned a lot, running around with David in the draft, on old tires and learning how to position the car in different places," Wallace said. "I'm really looking forward to coming back for the race, that's for sure.

"I have a new crew chief, an engineer and a shock guy. I didn't have a shock guy the last eight or 10 races last year. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I am at how well everything's coming together, because last year, we were a good Busch team, but we didn't have all the stuff to make it work right -- and now we do."

The youngster said a lot of his changes were internal.

"Last year, I tore up a large amount of [stuff] -- I wrecked and I wrecked and I wrecked," Wallace said. "But there was one way to look at it, though. Sometimes we wrecked running terrible, but the majority of times I wrecked I was driving over the car's ability -- so instead of a hero I looked like a hobo.

"I learned a lot -- like, not to drive over my head, stuff like controlling your temper, not speeding on pit road and just to finish the races. If you're running 20th on Lap 50, nine times out of 10 if you finish you'll get a top-15 or maybe even a top-10 -- so I need to try to focus on finishing the races rather than leading every lap, like I was doing."

Steve said he'd spent the better part of the last month working with Holly at the shop, getting meals together and building a relationship; and he saw it pay off immediately when he told his mechanic what he needed and the changes were quickly and correctly made.

"This just really proves to us that all of the changes we made in the offseason are working so far," Steve Wallace said. "Harold and I are really starting to get along well. He has a ton of knowledge and has become a huge asset to our team already, so I have to tell you, I'm really excited about the prospects for this year."

Rusty Wallace said his team had nearly 12 completely new Chevrolet racecars built and that the team had sold "three or four" Dodges left from last season.

"We didn't just take the Dodge bodies off and put Chevrolet bodies on -- we built all-new cars. You want to talk about wholesale change: We've got new engines, new drivers -- and even the doggoned sponsor changed his name, from HomeLife to Atreus Homes & Communities.

"Steve's got another year of maturity under his belt and he's been at that shop every day -- and Stremme's been there every day."

Wallace said his wife, Patti, had expressed a concern, saying Wallace had retired from full-time Cup competition after the 2005 season -- but he hadn't slowed down, with TV work, his race team and other business commitments.

"I don't feel like I'm stretched too thin," Wallace said he told her, "because I feel comfortable and I'm enjoying it because I like doing things."