The Final Four

With the first weekend of Daytona Speedweeks now officially in the books and 39 of 43 drivers locked into the Daytona 500 field, Thursday will be go-or-go-home time for the 17 racers battling for the final four spots.

Thursday is when the Gatorade Duel 150 qualifying races, which will be televised live on SPEED at 2 p.m., will take place. Two drivers from each Duel will advance to join the 39 drivers already in the field, those being Daytona 500 pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr., second-qualifier Mark Martin, the remaining 33 cars in the top 35 in 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup owner points, plus Bill Elliott, Travis Kvapil, Tony Stewart and Terry Labonte.

The first Duel has just seven cars looking to transfer: Joe Nemechek, Scott Riggs, Brad Keselowski, Kirk Shelmerdine, Tony Raines, Mike Skinner and Carl Long. On paper, Nemechek, Riggs and Keselowski seem to be the best bets to advance, because the other four have been bog slow.

The second Duel is a little harder to handicap, as it features 10 drivers trying to make it in: Regan Smith, Boris Said, AJ Allmendinger, Jeremy Mayfield, Mike Wallace, Mike Garvey, Derrike Cope, Kelly Bires, Norm Benning and Geoff Bodine. Out of this group, I like Smith and Allmendinger to move up, though Said, Wallace and Mayfield all have a shot. For the rest of the hopefuls, though, it’s unlikely they’ll make the 500.

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If Saturday night’s Bud Shootout is any indication, we ought to have an epic Daytona 500. The oft-criticized new-generation NASCAR race car seems to run especially well at plate tracks, and the fact that it is so difficult to handle means the entire field is on the ragged edge for virtually all the race.

The key to victory, it seems, will be teamwork. These cars are closely enough matched where it isn’t going to be as it was in years past where a Gordon or an Earnhardt or a Jarrett had the field covered. Instead, we well could have a case of déjà vu all over again, a repeat of last year, when Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch hooked up to make two merely good cars all of a sudden great. Then again, Kevin Harvick, made another banzai charge to victory in the Shootout, just as he did in the Daytona 500, so you never know.

Elsewhere, the winter testing ban has received near-universal positive marks from racers. Everyone showed up at Daytona rested, energized and ready to race — quite an improvement from last year’s pre-season testing marathon at Daytona, Southern California and Las Vegas.