2005 Driver Previews

• Kurt Busch, No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Ford

Kurt Busch's team returns intact, including crew chief Jimmy Fennig, who engineered a career year for Busch that included three wins, 10 top five finishes and 21 top 10s. "The way we had everybody return on our team is a great feeling ... but yet to know that we achieved something very special. It enables us to walk around a bit lighter with our footsteps and just to smile and look at the other teams and to have different crewmembers addressing my crewmembers as champions."

• Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet

Despite having run just three full seasons of Cup Series competition, Jimmie Johnson has practically done it all: led the series in victories, swept the season at a track (well, four tracks, actually), won four consecutive races, sat on the pole for the Daytona 500. The list goes on and on. But there's still plenty left on the docket. "Last year was a very special year for us," Johnson said. "To win eight [races], overcome the tragedy of the airplane [crash] ... that's going to tough to beat. A championship will beat that."

• Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet

While many Cup teams spent the offseason sweating over NASCAR's spoiler modifications and Goodyear's new tire compound, four-time series champion Jeff Gordon says he's thrilled with the changes and says they may help him return to the dominance that helped make him a household name. "I think it will make for better racing and it allows our team to perform better as well," said Gordon, who finished third in points last year. "That is where we are at our best -- when we have to get the car handling well."

• Mark Martin, No. 6 Viagra Ford

Mark Martin enters his final full-time Cup season with the same goal that he's had since he began racing in NASCAR's top series in 1981: win his first series championship. "I'm not 26, I'm 46," he said. "I made the supreme commitment to this sport and everything else came second in my life -- for 30 years. That's enough." But that doesn't mean Martin is going to dog it in his final season. "I realize it's gonna be the most challenging year of my career. I've made that commitment to go at it with all the ferocity that I have."

• Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet

An offseason crew swap with teammate Michael Waltrip and mediocre testing speeds during Preseason Thunder mean Junior enters 2005 with more question marks than there were in War and Peace. "It's hard to tell where we're at in the grand scheme -- from one end of the garage to the other," Earnhardt said. The first such unknown -- and the one garnering the most attention -- is the leadership capability of crew chief Pete Rondeau, just the second man to hold that post with Junior's Bud program.

• Tony Stewart, No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet

Tony Stewart enters 2005 as a 33-year-old, which is pretty much middle-aged in this young-gun driven world. He's been with Greg Zipadelli for every one of his seven seasons at NASCAR's top level, and Stewart says he hopes "Zippy" will be his crew chief for a long time. But other surroundings at Joe Gibbs Racing have changed. The team will have three cars for the first time in its 13-year history with the addition of Jason Leffler, but the team should rebound from a lackluster 2004.

• Ryan Newman, No. 12 Alltel Dodge

Ryan Newman has more pressing matters than a disagreement with teammate Rusty Wallace; Newman is coming off his worst year in the Cup Series. He won twice, but his consistency simply wasn't there, and he barely made the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Even though he led the circuit in Bud Poles, he was hardly the same driver who won eight races in 2003. But Newman has two things that point toward a renaissance, including the new Dodge Charger, which replaced the four-year-old Intrepid.

• Matt Kenseth, No. 17 DeWalt Ford

Intangibles are impossible to predict. But to Matt Kenseth, those hard-to-predict intangibles may be the key to winning the championship. "I think my team is a top-10 team and I think we have top-10 equipment," Kenseth said. "With that being said, I think there are 25 teams out there that are top-10 teams and have top-10 equipment, so a lot of it has to do with luck. "I hate using that word, but good racing fortune, not having flat tires at the wrong time, getting wrecked, stuff breaking ... whatever."

• Elliott Sadler, No. 38 M&M's Ford

Some view Elliott Sadler's appearance in the 2004 Chase for the Nextel Cup as a fluke. Those same skeptics expect Sadler to fade into anonymity this year, proving last year's two-victory season was nothing more than a stroke of luck. But Sadler, crew chief Todd Parrott and the rest of the No. 38 Robert Yates Racing team have other ideas. To use one of Sadler's favorite phrases, 2004 was simply the tip of the iceberg. "If you knew what I knew ... I think we're definitely going to be a top-10 team."

• Jeremy Mayfield, No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger

Jeremy Mayfield said that if it took him the better part of three seasons to figure out the proverbial "big picture." But he thinks he's got it now -- and he's ready to put it into practice. "I knew last year was a great year, but it was like a building year," says Mayfield. "This year will be different. I'm confident about all my guys and the new car and the way everything is going at Evernham Motorsports. ... Last year was a good year, but now we've got all our ducks in a row and we're ready to race."

• Jamie McMurray, No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge

Jamie McMurray has made one simple resolution for the 2005 Nextel Cup Series season. "We either want to be locked in to the Chase (for the Nextel Cup) real early, or completely out of it by August," McMurray said. "We don't want to go through what we went through last year." Despite what amounted to a career year in 2004, McMurray acknowledged that team owner Chip Ganassi, who owns five Indy car championships, probably has higher expectations for his three Cup teams this season.

• Bobby Labonte, No. 18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet

Throughout the first half of the 2004 season, it appeared as if Bobby Labonte was a lock to qualify for the 10-race playoff. After a crew chief change, the team struggled to find a setup Labonte was comfortable with. Labonte fell to 12th overall by season's end, marking just the third time since 1996 he failed to finish in the top 10, and the first time in a decade-long tenure at JGR that he failed to win a race. "Obviously last year was a unique situation for our race team to make a change in the middle of the year," Labonte said.

• Kasey Kahne, No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger

While Kasey Kahne was close on several occasions last year -- he recorded five second-place finishes -- he never did break through to Victory Lane. That, he says, should change in 2005 with the help of new personnel and an upgraded restrictor-plate package. "With me being a rookie last year, it was tough on the team to know (in what areas) to work," Kahne said. "This year we have a better idea where we have to get better. We'll be much better at plate races and can save tests until the end of the year."

• Kevin Harvick, No. 29 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet

Kevin Harvick seems to have made an effort to fly under the radar during the offseason. He skipped testing at Daytona and hasn't been all that visible since the end of the 2004 season. Last season was a disappointment, but missing the Chase didn't wear on Harvick as much as one might think. "I don't know. I don't think it bothered me that much because I knew I did everything I could and so did the 29 guys," he said. "We performed so poorly there for a while that I knew we really didn't belong in that group anyway."

• Dale Jarrett, No. 88 UPS Ford

Dale Jarrett isn't ready for the rocking chair just yet. And he hopes to prove it in 2005. With Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin ending their Nextel Cup careers this season, many have wondered who would be next to head out to pasture. Jarrett, at 48 -- the same age as Wallace and two years older than Martin -- is approaching retirement age. But not so fast, Jarrett said. "If anything is going to wear on me physically, I want it to be the actual racing itself," he said. Jarrett, though, is fighting an uphill battle.

• Rusty Wallace, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge

It's last call for Rusty Wallace in 2005, but the argument could be made that the No. 2 team has been stuck in the pits (by Wallace's lofty standards) for more than a decade. But as his farewell season embarks, Wallace contends the Miller Lite team is getting back to basics, and it starts -- you guessed it -- in the pits. "One of the biggest things that has killed us over the last few years has been pit strategy -- particularly in 2002 and 2003 -- and it even bit us a couple of times last season," Wallace said.

• Greg Biffle, No. 16 National Guard Ford

The No. 16 team will have a mostly-rebuilt pit crew in 2005 -- the team will have a new gasman, catch can-man and tire changer, but Greg Biffle appears ready to make a step up to NASCAR's elite after a two-win season in 2004. "We lost a couple of good guys who went to pursue some other opportunities, so hopefully we'll be able to fill those voids with good people and not miss a beat," Biffle said. After a strong second half in 2004, Biffle will no doubt be expected to challenge for the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

• Jeff Burton, No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet

Burton was 13th among Nextel Cup Series drivers in points earned during the second half of 2004. Despite the new paint scheme, he expects the momentum to not just carry over, but build in 2005. "I don't want to get into how to design buildings and what color the car will be and all of that crap that I got caught up in over the past five years," he said. "I want to pay attention to what makes these cars go fast." Burton also says he knows he's more than just a driver to a team that is desperate to regain its glory days.

• Joe Nemechek, No. 01 U.S. Army Chevrolet

Joe Nemechek has four career wins, but this is the first time he will be with the same team -- MB2 Motorsports -- the year after scoring a victory. He also has crew chief Ryan Pemberton, who has been with the team since its inception. The team remained relatively intact over the winter, although it made minor changes to the pit crew. "We have got some great equipment, great people, and we're going to have a good year," says Nemechek. "All the speedway races, we run good at."

• Michael Waltrip, No. 15 NAPA Chevrolet

Michael Waltrip will start the season with his third crew chief in less than a year, Tony Eury Jr., after DEI swapped crews between the Nos. 8 and 15. Waltrip's strength in 2005 will continue to be the restrictor-plate tracks that he's done so well on in the past. The difference has to come on the short and intermediate tracks that dominate the schedule. "As I go into 2005, it's the most optimistic I could be, considering that I'm teaming with guys who just raced for a championship. I'm thankful I have that opportunity."