The summertime stop at Daytona International Speedway is always about turning the page. The Daytona 500 seems like a mere memory, and the Chase appears close enough to touch. The unofficial halfway point of the Cup season begins that period where the end feels closer than the beginning, where anxieties and point margins begin to tighten, where intensity levels grow as hot and as turbulent as the thunderclouds that often loom over the Central Florida coastline this time of year.

The race formerly known as the Firecracker 400 is all about moving on, and not just -- for one fortunate driver -- to Victory Lane, or for the rest of the field to Chicagoland Speedway the next week. The atmosphere is so much different than the circuit's first annual visit to Daytona, when everyone bunkers down for the better part of a month, a little slog emblematic of the much larger one ahead. It's much shorter, and a little more festive, without so much of the heaviness endemic to chasing the sport's biggest race. It's a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself.

But the turning points are there, in some years more obvious than others. This season they showed up early, in the form of a marathon practice session on Wednesday used to shake down the next-generation Nationwide car, a vehicle that at long last shares so many of the improved safety features of its Cup counterpart, but which didn't have to suffer the same architectural growing pains. This time NASCAR is doing it right from the very start, with manufacturers rolling out new racing models -- the Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger chief among them -- that flex considerable stylistic muscle.

"One of the biggest complaints when the Cup car came out was how big and boxy they looked," said Penske Racing driver Justin Allgaier. "NASCAR's done a great job of going back in and trying to fix some of the things that they didn't like about the original car." (Continued)