Notes: Waltrip team plane makes emergency landing

FONTANA, Calif. -- A group of Michael Waltrip Racing team members had a little more excitement than they would have liked on the flight from North Carolina to Southern California for Sunday's Sprint Cup race.

A two-engine Bombardier CRJ-200 with 44 team members and a crew of four made an emergency landing Thursday in Las Vegas after one of its engines developed a problem.

Ty Norris, vice president and general manager of MWR, said the plane left from Statesville, N.C., made a fuel stop in Salinas, Kan., and was flying at about 38,000 feet when the left engine lost oil pressure and the pilots shut it down.

"For those of us on the airplane, we didn't even know what was going on until they told us," Norris said. "I've been hearing a lot of things about what it must have been like on the plane. Honestly, when we descended into Las Vegas, the plane operated flawlessly on one engine and we landed with absolutely zero incident.

"The only thing that was different about the landing was the safety trucks and fire trucks waiting for us at the Las Vegas airport."

Norris said the whole thing sounds more dramatic than it really was.

"Obviously, it's always a concern when you have a dual-engine plane that only flies on one," he said. "But the pilots were flawless. Not to discount the fact that it's a scary situation, but the way the pilots handled it, we landed without incident got on a bus and got here last night."

Allmendinger hopes his schedule expands

The pressure hasn't lifted completely from A.J. Allmendinger's shoulders -- he still must qualify on speed for the first five events of the Sprint Cup season -- but after a third-place finish in last Sunday's Daytona 500, you can sense the relief in his voice.

Allmendinger is set to drive the first eight races of the season in the No. 44 Richard Petty Motorsports Dodge. Beyond that, he will compete in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona in July. The key element to expanding Allmendinger's schedule is finding additional sponsorship for his car.

The finish at Daytona certainly helped, and Allmendinger hopes to build on that success.

"I think we showed as an organization that we'd be a great team to have a sponsor come on board and help us out," Allmendinger said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. "As of right now, we still only have the eight races, plus the Daytona race -- basically we have the nine races.

"The deals are out there, and I think that there's pressure every week. You've got to go out there and show that it's not a one-week fluke and go out and perform. I told them I'd do anything. I'd even cook them dinner. Well, maybe my wife would -- I can't cook."

Mears excited about homecoming

For Casey Mears, the Sprint Cup season starts in earnest when the series comes to California, his native state.

"One thing about coming to California is that I have a lot of friends and family, and it makes it one of the races I want to win the most," said Mears, who grew up in nearby Bakersfield. "You have to look at Daytona as Daytona, and then you have to look at the rest of the season. There are so many different elements in Daytona that we don't have to deal with on a given race weekend.

"Obviously, we're dealing with cars that we can't tweak or tune that much, since there are a lot of set rules in Daytona. When you come to California, it's all so new, and you feel like now the season's starting. Now we can put what we want in these cars and really find out how we stack up against the rest of the field."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.