Waiting for the green flag to drop on a season full of unknowns

Carl Edwards has been gearing up all offseason to challenge Jimmie Johnson for the Cup. Getty Images

It begins on Friday, the longest season in sports. The Sprint Cup cars will roar onto the track at Daytona International Speedway to practice for Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout, NASCAR's version of an all-star preseason game. Then on Sunday there's qualifying for the 51st running of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 15, the first of 36 points-paying races in a season that is already filled with more uncertainty than any in recent memory.

The sinking economy has hit NASCAR perhaps as hard as it has any other sport. Over the winter nearly every team had to cut payroll and issue pink slips, which translated into several hundred people losing their jobs. To survive, four high-profile teams had to merge: Dale Earnhardt Inc. with Ganassi Racing, and Gillette Evernham with Petty Enterprises. There will be a full field of 43 cars at Daytona, but it appears that it's only a matter of weeks before the starting grid will be short a few cars, something that hasn't happened since 1997.

Manufacturing support from Detroit has shrunk dramatically. GM and Chrysler have reduced their motor sports budgets by nearly one-third, and Ford has pulled the plug on its funding for the truck series and the Nationwide Series, the double-A and triple-A of NASCAR. Even Toyota, which has fared better than its American competitors during this global recession, is cutting back on its NASCAR spending by roughly 25 percent.

Now the question for fans and teams is this: How will these trying economic times affect what happens on the track? Over the offseason I spoke to dozens of people in the sport about this very question -- drivers, crew chiefs, owners, engineers -- and the consensus was this: There is going to be a greater separation between the haves and the have-nots in the sport. This means that, in reality, there are only four teams that likely will win races in 2009: Hendrick Motorsports, Roush-Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing.

To help teams trim their budgets, NASCAR banned testing on the tracks the circuit visits during the season. But this hasn't stopped the big-budgeted organizations from testing. Instead of trekking to NASCAR-sanctioned tracks, teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway Racing are now testing at places like The Rock in Rockingham, N.C., tracks that aren't on the NASCAR schedule. Also, teams that have multi-million dollar equipment, such as seven-post shaker rigs -- a machine that allows teams to test cars in their race shop -- will have an even more pronounced advantage this season over teams that don't possess those in-house contraptions.

"There are more unknowns headings into this season than any I can remember," says veteran driver Jeff Burton. "It's going to be a challenge for the smaller teams this year, no question. But I think you're still going to see some great racing among the top 15 or 20 guys, week in and week out. I think the championship is wide open."

Aside from the economy, the biggest story in the sport heading into Daytona is Jimmie Johnson's quest to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win four straight championships. It's hard to bet against JJ. He and crew chief Chad Knaus have mastered the art of peaking at the perfect time in the season. If form holds, the No. 48 team will win a few races early, slump over the summer, come on in the weeks before the Chase, then perform at its highest level over the final 10 weeks of the season. What makes the Johnson/Knaus duo so formidable is that there isn't a single track in the Chase on which they struggle. On the 10 Chase tracks, Johnson has 24 career victories.

Who's the biggest threat to Johnson's hegemony? Carl Edwards, who finished 69 points behind Johnson in the final standings in '08 but actually scored more points than JJ over the course of the 36-race season. I spent a lot of time with Edwards this offseason for a story that will appear in Sports Illustrated next week, and from all indications, he appears primed for a championship run. After all, Edwards should be the driver to beat on the 1.5-mile tracks this season (there are six 1.5-milers in the Chase) and he's improved significantly on short tracks. He and his team have tested as much as anyone else in the sport this offseason -- last year Johnson and Knaus conducted nearly twice as many test sessions as Edwards and his crew chief, Bob Osborne -- and I expect Edwards to start very, very strong this season, winning as many as two of the first three races.

"I'm ready to go," Edwards says. "We learned a lot from last season, and I can't wait for Daytona."

Soon the wait for Edwards and all the other drivers will be over. Soon the engines will fire. Soon the green flag will drop on what promises to be a compelling and tumultuous NASCAR season.

Lars Anderson can be reached at siwriters@simail.com