Notes: Harvick glad to get to Daytona with new goals

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Kevin Harvick's best memory of Daytona International Speedway, obviously, is the one in which he out-raced Mark Martin over the last quarter-lap of the 2007 Daytona 500 to score the defining victory of his career.

Harvick and his Richard Childress Racing team were back at Daytona on Monday morning as the second session of Sprint Cup Preseason Thunder opened, and even though their No. 29 Chevrolets were mired far down the first morning's speed chart, Harvick wasn't concerned.

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"I liked the fact that our main goal [Monday] was to be the first ones on the racetrack, and we accomplished that," Harvick said. "We kind of came down with a little bit different plan than normal but we accomplished our goal and that was to be the first ones on the track, so mission accomplished for the day."

Harvick said his team would work with a number of different engine and car combinations to determine which would be best during February's Speedweeks, and he praised his teammate Clint Bowyer for giving the team a good starting point for their tests this week; Bowyer tested last week.

"Clinton coming last week was great because right out of the box the car drives good, and there's a definite difference between the two cars," Harvick said. "We came down here with kind of a specific plan engine wise with components that they started with last week just to kind of get a handle on our whole company's grasp of what car is the fastest and what car is not fast.

"So we're trying to sort that out between the six or eight cars that we have, just deciding which car is which. And after we get through with that, we're still not done. We'll have changed two or three different engines and just going through those motions."

Burton on bumping

Harvick's other teammate Jeff Burton was asked about Elliott Sadler's comment last week that bump-drafting might be even more of an issue this Speedweeks than it has been in the past, and as usual, Burton had a well-considered opinion.

"I think he's probably right," said Burton, who was third in last year's Daytona 500. "The great question is honestly how the car is going to handle. My inclination is that they're going to handle bad enough where I don't think bump-drafting is going to be a factor -- I think the factor is going to be who can put the car where they want to put them.

"Bump-drafting really becomes a problem when you have the 43-car packs with no other option to pass somebody other than get the bump-draft thing going. I think this is going to be a different kind of race. I think handling is going to be really important.

"Ultimately the bumpers lining up are a good thing, but I honestly believe that handling is going to be so important after 15, 20 laps that bump-drafting is not going to be the major issue."

Burton said to check back with him after drafting practice begins, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

"We haven't done any race runs [so] I'll be much smarter or more confused [Tuesday] afternoon; I'll let you know which one it is," Burton said. "I don't think that any of us right now have enough information to really go on. They certainly drive differently than the other car, and their ride is much more harsh than the other car, but what really matters is how they race [and] I don't have an impression on that yet."

Vickers positive about 2008

Red Bull Racing's Brian Vickers sees a big difference between 2007, when his Toyota team competed in its first season in Cup racing, and 2008.

"We came down here completely blind last year and we weren't just struggling to test, we were struggling just to be here -- we weren't nearly as prepared as we wanted or needed to be," Vickers said. "Now we have a year under our belt and we have some speedway cars in the shop so it's a big difference in coming down here."

Vickers is also working with new crew chief Kevin Hamlin for the first time, and he's enjoying it after meeting his new chief mechanic for lunch last week before he left town.

"So far things are going well and our expectations are very high for him this season," Vickers said. "There are really no pre-conceived ideas, but I have a lot of respect for him and I know he's accomplished a lot in his career and has a lot of experience.

"I keep hearing from everyone in the garage that there is not a better person in the garage to have on top of the pit box calling a race on Sunday. We won't see that for about another month, but that is very promising."

Waltrip brimming with confidence

Despite the nightmare that was Speedweeks 2007 at Daytona, when Michael Waltrip's team was rocked by an illegal fuel additive scandal before bouncing back to make the Daytona 500, Waltrip is enthused to be back for testing because of the No. 55 Toyota he's driving, which was fast out of the truck on Monday morning.

"We can get pretty confident because we just sat on the pole at Talladega with this same car and engine," Waltrip said of last fall's superspeedway COT debut. "We felt pretty good about things coming down here and to see that play out as we expected gives me a lot of confidence."

Waltrip was even more enthused about the fact that teammate Dale Jarrett posted the fastest lap, to date, in testing on Monday morning in his No. 44 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota. Waltrip has three new crew chiefs in place at his organization -- including 1992 Cup champion Paul Andrews working with his team -- and it's got him psyched.

"[Paul's] very well organized, he understands our sport and he knows what he wants to accomplish -- he's a strong leader and that's what the No. 55 team really needed," Waltrip said. "He, Ryan [Pemberton, David Reutimann's crew chief] and Bill [Pappas, Jarrett's chief] are working well together in addition to [competition director] Bobby Kennedy, who is helping out a great deal in his role. Everything is going really well for us as a team."

Daytona 500 rules for Elliott

Bill Elliott has won the Daytona 500 twice in his career, in 1985 and 1987, and 15 years after that scored another iconic win the Brickyard 400. He didn't hem and haw much when asked if the 500 victories were his most cherished.

"Daytona is what stock-car racing is and there are no ifs, ands or buts," Elliott said while taking a break from testing his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. "But then I kind of look at Indy and even though it doesn't mean as much from a stock-car racing standpoint, in terms of racing history overall it means so much because it's been around for over 100 years.

"So when you look at it from that standpoint, it's two totally different worlds. But to me, for the stock-car world, Daytona is where it is."

Busy month for Villeneuve

Former open-wheel champion Jacques Villeneuve faces one of the most critical months in his career, moving forward from last week's Preseason Thunder session in which the Bill Davis Racing Toyota driver was the third-best in single-car runs (complete speeds).

That's critical because Villeneuve's No. 27 Camry isn't among the top 35 owners that are locked into the 500 based on 2007's owner standings. His crew chief, Slugger Labbe, acknowledged the stress he and his men would be under leading up to Speedweeks 2008.

"The whole month will be nerve-wracking," Labbe said. "We downloaded all our data for the 22 car [teammate Dave Blaney] so they can have a good test and hopefully they can work on some other things to help us. We just have to make sure we do everything right between now and [the Daytona 500]."

Labbe said his team decided to come to Daytona at the last minute, only four days before the test was scheduled to begin, but it didn't slow Villeneuve much.

"We threw a bunch of stuff together to come down here, and it all worked out well," Labbe said. "Now we've got to get ready to go to the Vegas and California tests, we've got a one-day Rockingham test, wind tunnel tests, seven-post tests -- so it's a busy month."

Labbe said the Vegas-California four-day test, with two days at each venue, was critical for adapting the Car of Tomorrow to intermediate, high-downforce tracks, a process that began last fall at an open COT test at Atlanta.

"The Atlanta test last year was very critical because it opened everyone's eyes to, like, 'Man, we've got to get our act together, because we can learn a lot,'" Labbe said. "We learned a lot at the Atlanta test, the dos and the don'ts and what we had to improve on -- and we had a good winter on that side of it, with our engineering group putting a lot of the good packages together, so we'll try to apply that to Vegas and California."