Will lack of testing play role at Daytona 500?

Jeff Gordon is slumping. In most sports, a slump is resolved through additional practice. Yet Gordon, who hasn’t won a Sprint Cup event in 15 months, thinks a lack of practice will help him in NASCAR’s Super Bowl.

Huh, you say?

Well, NASCAR officials banned testing this year at tracks that host Sprint Cup events in an effort to help teams save money during the economic crunch. Gordon thinks not having the Preseason Thunder testing at Daytona will help him win his fourth 500 – bet on the race soon at WagerWeb.com.

His logic? Gordon led 46 laps in the 2008 Coke Zero 400 at Daytona and was in contention for the win in the closing laps, but finished 30th after making contact while leading on Lap 161.

“I’m really fired up about Daytona this year … without the testing,” said Gordon, who last scored a Sprint Cup victory at Charlotte in October of 2007. “I felt like we had the best car (at Daytona) last July. I made a couple of mistakes and cost us the race, but we had, I felt, great power and the best handling car for sure in the race.

“With no changes and no testing, we’ve got a great package to be able to come down (to Daytona).”

While eliminating testing no doubt saves money, it might well affect the product on the track. Drivers have found non-sanctioned tracks to run tests, but none of those tracks are configured to emulate any of the tracks on the Sprint Cup Series.

The lack of testing will have a limited impact on established powerhouses like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing because they have the resources to compensate. The same doesn’t hold true for drivers shifting to a new race team, guys like Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman.

But it doesn’t sound like NASCAR is about to backtrack on this decision.

“We believe the suspension of testing that we announced in November for the ‘09 season has accomplished a lot and most of what we wanted it to accomplish economically for car owners,” NASCAR president Mike Helton said. “We’re hearing things just in the month of January. I had a driver tell me his own personal expenses in January were down almost $200,000. I had a car owner tell us just in the month of January that their expenses were down almost $300,000 because of no testing.”

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