It’s given Toyota executives hope that its teams will reach Victory Lane this season, and there’s no reason to believe a Gibbs driver won’t challenge for the title. Tony Stewart is a two-time series champion, Denny Hamlin made his first Chase last season and newcomer Kyle Busch is determined to show Hendrick how wrong he was for dumping Busch to make room for Earnhardt.

Close attention will be paid this season to the infusion of open-wheel and foreign drivers. Four others have followed Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya’s successful switch to NASCAR, and Sam Hornish Jr. is the only American in the group.

The addition of Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, and French Canadians Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier has opened NASCAR to a wider audience at a time when the sport is struggling to grow its existing fan base. These new open-wheelers can attract international attention and potentially draw in foreign sponsorship that could diffuse the effect of the weak American economy.

But these four open-wheelers may struggle far worse than Montoya ever did. Considered a rare, exceptional talent with tremendous car control, Montoya’s team owner fully expects him to make the Chase for the championship this season.

The others should be satisfied with simply making all 36 races this season. With 50-some cars expected to fight for 43 spots on most weekends, the NASCAR newcomers might find their transition into stock cars won’t be quite as smooth as Montoya’s was.

It will all play out on the race track, which is where NASCAR wants attention focused after several seasons of tinkering left many longtime fans longing for the good ol’ days. Between the France-designed Chase, two name changes to its title series, and a series of small but altering tweaks, much has changed as NASCAR heads into its 50th running of the Daytona 500.

So France minimized changes this season, hoping to get fans to remember the action, excitement and personalities that make up NASCAR.

“We’re getting back to the basics, we’re going to try to minimize the change going forward as best we can and focus on what we’ve always focused on — which is the best product in the world,” he said.

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