What Will 2007 Bring for Michael Waltrip Racing?

Pre-season testing begins on Monday and the Daytona 500 is only a little over a month away. In some cases I'm thrilled for the season to start again because although the off-season is the shortest of all professional sports, it seems like NASCAR is the most painful sport to be without. Nine months of non-stop thunder suddenly stops for two months of relative silence. News for the off-season can be agonizingly slow - a few here-and-there driver and sponsor changes, driver sites update with new teams and/or sponsors, people getting married or having children. But other than that, only silence and speculation, daydreams and nightmares about what the next season may hold.

When I became a Michael Waltrip fan back in 2003, I thought he would stay with DEI forever, until his retirement. Fast forward three years and I was looking at a man with more guts than I ever thought he had. Michael will be attempting the unthinkable this year - being a driver for a new team with fledgling manufacturer Toyota as well as a team owner to himself, 1999 Winston Cup Champion Dale Jarrett, promising rookie David Reutimann and scores of shop workers and sponsor representatives. Michael Waltrip Racing has been born at full speed.

But will they be successful? MWR certainly has the people to give it that chance - notably Ty Norris, long-time Executive Vice President of DEI, now MWR's General Manager. Even if I had had no knowledge of Ty's history, just by watching ESPN's series Michael Waltrip Racing: A New Era gives me a lot of comfort and confidence regarding the business side of the organization. Ty is an incredibly intelligent person and he balances Michael's spontaneity perfectly. During sponsor interviews, even with nervous rookie David Reutimann, Ty keeps a cool head and a straight face no matter what he is feeling inside. He is a vitally important keystone of MWR and if nothing else, I doubt he will let the organization fall to total ruin.

Bobby Kennedy is also an encouraging asset to the racing side of things. He has many years of experience as a crew chief for Michael in the Busch Series before heading to Darrell Waltrip's Craftsman Truck Series team in 2004, so it was no surprise when he was hired back to be MWR's Team Director.

To add to the list of familiar names is Matt Borland coming from Penske Racing. The chemistry between Borland and Ryan Newman had been seemingly decreasing in the past few years, and although I was a little sad to see him leave I was thrilled he landed at MWR. However, this appeared to have led to what has been one of MWR's first blows (though Ty would not call it that) - Larry Carter's departure from MWR to Roush Racing. It was fairly well-known that while they worked together at Penske, the relationship between Borland and Carter went sour, apparently as a result of Borland sharing little to no information with Carter. According to this ESPN article, Carter did not seem especially pleased MWR hired Borland because he announced his leaving soon after. While Ty does not think it will hurt the team, it leaves MWR with a predicament that they have not yet solved - who will they hire as crew chief for David? Daytona approaches rapidly...

At the moment, Dale Jarrett is settled with Borland, the engineering-based crew chief he had lamented the lack of at Robert Yates Racing. Michael paired himself with David Hyder, relatively unknown and unproven, having worked for both Petty Racing and BAM Racing with Ken Schrader (with little success at both organizations). However, Michael feels confident about working with him so we'll see if Michael can find himself "another Tony Jr." in Hyder. David, as far as fans know, is crew chiefless. Some candidates speculated by fans have been Jason Overstreet, his CTS crew chief, Jerry Baxter, the #99 Busch Series crew chief (but I assume he will remain at that position to be David's full-time crew chief next year) and even Bobby Kennedy, but with all the work that man is already doing I doubt he will be a crew chief unless MWR has no other option.

Some more heartening developments occurred during the Homestead test near the end of the 2006 season. On the second day of the test, as shown on MWR: A New Era, Michael hopped into the new 2007 Toyota Camry. The laps were not good and Michael did not like the car at all. David arrived later that session and ended up 59th out of 75 cars (5 of which were Cars of Tomorrow). The second session was much more successful as David bettered the Camry and shot up the charts to 7th of 59 cars (two of which were COTs). Day three, session one - 7th out of 23 cars, and session two showed him 8th out of 16 cars. Rookie driver, rookie team and a rookie car, but those don't look like rookie speeds. That test session, what David has done in CTS and with Michael's struggling Busch team are hinting to me that David was an excellent choice for an MWR driver and will likely be the best driver of the three as the years go on.

But there will be many challenges for the organization to overcome this season. The most important and possibly the most damaging problem is the lack of a guaranteed spot in the first five races. Michael finished 2006 38th in owners points while the #00 (technically the #100) ended up 54th, a position that is basically worthless. Both drivers will be forced to race their way in at Daytona, California, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Bristol. Dale will be lucky enough to have a Champion's Provisional, so he will at least be guaranteed into the Daytona 500 (as for the other five, no word yet on whether NASCAR is implementing a limit on the usage of these provisionals as they did in the Busch Series). According to Jayski (unofficial, mind you), there will be 52 full-time teams this year, not to mention the many part-time teams - funded by big-name organizations and not - showing up and trying to qualify. As far as Daytona is looking, there could be 60 cars, give or take a few!

The qualifying format for the 500 could make it more or less difficult for Michael and David to make the race, depending on how you look at it. Michael is arguably one of the best drafters driving today, so if his Camry is good he could easily make it to the front. David looks to be a fairly good drafter, with two Top 10s in three CTS races at Daytona as well as a Top 10 at the first CTS race at Talladega. If he can get into a Duel with a teammate and get hooked up with him, he could be safe. But because of the actual race format of qualifying, a lot can go wrong. A tire could go down, an engine could explode, you can get caught up in a wreck. It's frightening to think that Michael or David could miss the Daytona 500 because of a wreck started ten cars ahead of them. The only way they will be safe is if they qualify on the front row, and while I believe the Toyotas will be pretty decent, the likelihood of that is slim.

All this has made me both extremely excited and very worried about this year. But all I can hope for is success, and keep on supporting my driver and now my team through any ups and downs they may experience.