Importance of testing at Daytona increases with rule changes

Testing at Daytona in January has always been pretty important. Teams go there with clean slates, everybody is undefeated as the new racing season starts, and are eager to find out if the changes they did to their cars will gain them the much needed speed to compete for the win.

This year however, is a little different for the teams testing on the high-banked 'Birthplace of Speed', not only are they on a quest for speed but they have to now deal with several rule changes that will not only effect the speed of the cars, but also the way in which they handle.

The larger multi-car teams may have an easier time getting a handle on this new rules package since they have many cars to do various set-ups on and then share the collected data (remember these guys can have performance data collection devices on their cars during testing) amongst the rest of the 'team' whereas the smaller pocketed single car teams might struggle trying to find the right set-up for these changes in the rules.