"It feels like you’re going about 50 mph faster going into the corners," Scott said. "The motor has a different sound. It gets you excited. I haven’t had to qualify at a big track and lift and use the brake for a long, long time. We don’t do it anywhere on the Nationwide Series or in the Truck Series. Still I’m trying to figure that out, how to have speed with a car that has all this motor, and getting out of the throttle and using the brake and how to do all that."

He’s not alone. Scott is one of three drivers making their Sprint Cup debut Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, along with Larson and Blake Koch. Larson and Austin Dillon are Nationwide drivers making the jump to Sprint Cup next season. And they’re doing it in an era of more open but still relatively limited testing, and where the Nationwide and Sprint Cup cars are different animals due to their stark differences in horsepower.

No wonder, then, only one Sprint Cup rookie — Joey Logano in 2009 — has won a race in the past six seasons, that coming after a golden era where first-year drivers such as Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson all won straight out of the box. Next year brings a great chance to end the streak, with Larson and Dillon making the leap. But some point to rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr., a two-time Nationwide champion currently 21st in Sprint Cup points, as a cautionary tale.

"The best young driver that’s kind of beat up on those guys the last few years is Ricky Stenhouse. And he’s had a little bit of a tough time adjusting to the Cup style of the cars," said Kevin Harvick, who won twice as a Sprint Cup rookie in 2001, and has won 20 more times since.

"It’s a lot harder for these guys coming up from those series to adapt to the Cup car, because they just have so much more power, less grip, from a downforce standpoint. … They’re 25 mph slower than we are at some places down the straightaway on entry. You overdrive the (Nationwide) car constantly compared to how you would drive a Cup car. There’s some potential in the young crop of drivers, but I think when you look at the success of the guys that have been around it, like myself and (Matt) Kenseth, and have driven these cars for a long time and evolved with the new generation of cars, they’re hard to drive. And to come in and just adapt to them immediately is going to be tough."

Compare that to the early 2000s, when the cars had more in common under the hood. Drivers of Harvick’s era also benefitted from a more liberal testing policy that allowed 12 two-day test sessions. "I got 24 test days to sort stuff out," Johnson said. Today, each organization is limited to four tests on sanctioned tracks — granted, an improvement from a few years ago when due to financial concerns the practice was outlawed altogether. But the learning curve remains a steep one for drivers trying to take the next step.

"Everything just happens so much faster — going down the straightaways, how you have to drive it into the corner," said Stenhouse, this season’s likely Sunoco Rookie of the Year in Sprint Cup. "It definitely catches you off guard a little bit, and you definitely have to kind of calm yourself back down when you go to the (Nationwide) garage and say, ‘Hey, this car is going to be a lot slower than the one I just got out of.’ It takes a while to get used to it. I’m still getting used to it."

Next season, Larson will take over the No. 42 car at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing currently piloted by Juan Pablo Montoya. For his debut at Charlotte, he’s driving a No. 51 car entered by Phoenix Racing, but essentially prepared by EGR. He may have another advantage as well — a sprint-car background that prepared him for high-horsepower vehicles. The sprint cars he came up on had about 850 horsepower, same as a Sprint Cup car, but carried about half the weight.

"I just think being used to that extra horsepower, being able to have experience finessing the throttle, is a big help for the Cup Series," said the 21-year-old California native. Dillon can relate — he cut his racing teeth in an 830-horsepower dirt car, and already has a top finish of 11th in limited Sprint Cup activity leading up to his rookie campaign with Richard Childress Racing next year.

"I have a lot more power in my dirt car when I get in it than my Nationwide car," Dillon said. "I feel like you have to be able to be adaptive and be able to change your driving style to whatever kind of car it is. I do believe there are some guys who are better in high-horsepower than others, and some who are better in lower-horsepower cars than other. It’s something you have to be able to adapt to. … I want to be able to race anything I get in, so I just want to be able to adapt as much as I can."

Johnson is another driver who came up in higher-horsepower vehicles, in his case off-road trucks, and that experience left him needing more throttle to turn the car. He won just once at the Nationwide level, and has gone on to claim five championships on the Sprint Cup tour, proof that some drivers are better suited to more power under the hood. "Coming from high-horsepower cars, I think the Cup car is going to fit their style a little better," he said of Dillon and Larson, likely to battle one another for rookie honors next year.

Larson seems somewhat unfazed by it all, maintaining the same cool countenance he’s displayed throughout his first season in the Nationwide Series. "I lift and get back in the gas at the same points," he said of driving the two different cars at Charlotte. Stenhouse, also a product of the sprint-car ranks, believes Larson will adapt quickly to the Sprint Cup level, as he’s done everywhere else. The two drivers share the same management company, which sought Stenhouse’s opinion on Larson potentially making the step up.

"He might as well. It’s either, you learn while you’re doing it now, or you learn while you’re doing it later," Stenhouse said. "At some point, you have to do it. And I think he’s ready to do it."

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It all sets up a potential showdown with Johnson at a track where both drivers have weathered wild swings in fortune — Kenseth’s two wins at Charlotte spanned more than a decade, while Johnson has prevailed in just one of his last 15 after claiming five out of six races.

"We’re still trying to find that magic where we can separate ourselves each time we come back, but I still feel like we’re in that top-three, top-five group," Johnson said. "As long as Matt isn’t winning, then a top-three or a top-five wouldn’t be too bad this weekend."

Although the Chase has yet to distill itself down to a two-man duel — third-place Kevin Harvick is 25 points behind after his win last Sunday, and the wildest of wild cards looms next week at Talladega — Charlotte certainly offers the opportunity for the leaders to build some separation. Johnson’s six career victories are a record here, and he won the Sprint All-Star Race at the same facility in May. Kenseth has been the driver to beat on 1.5-milers all season, despite his 15th-place result here in the spring.

"Sometimes you can’t just look at numbers," Kenseth said at an event where he and watch company Citizen donated $25,000 to the University of Wisconsin Alzheimer’s research facility in remembrance of the his mother Nicola, who died of the disease last year. "I think more times than not we’ve ran well here, we just don’t have the finishes. … I feel like our performance has been pretty good here. Especially the last two or three years, I think our performance has been really good here. We don’t always have the finishes."

That was certainly the case in May, where Kenseth led 112 laps before he and Johnson were both taken out of contention in the same crash with 65 to go. Johnson had a stranglehold on the place in the middle 2000s, before a resurfacing altered so many of the things — the bumps in the old asphalt, the tire fall-off, even the line the No. 48 car took around the facility — that helped feed his dominance, and brought the five-time champion back to the field.

"The overwhelming majority of it is the repave, I think," Johnson said, referring to the track’s 2006 resurfacing. "…. The old surface, the bumps, how tough it was to get around this place just worked really, really well for me, and we were able to find a little advantage, especially on long runs. And now with the surface like it is, it’s just far different."

That certainly would seem to level the scales between him and Kenseth, who has won every other race this season on a 1.5-mile track — with victories at Las Vegas, spring Kansas, Kentucky and Chicagoland. After falling short in Kansas City last weekend, that pattern would seem to portend a favorable outcome Saturday night in Charlotte.

"Good. That’s good," Kenseth said with a smile. "I just hope it keeps working like that. I still can’t believe the year that we’ve had. We’re certainly still in a really good spot after four weeks. We want to win a championship and that’s our goal, but I’ll say it again — no matter what happens at the end of the year, it’s been an incredible year. I just hope we can keep it going. Obviously this is an important six weeks, and it would be nice to be able to finish it off, that’s for sure."

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