For the first time in three years, Brian Vickers and the No. 25 team will bring a new car to Daytona. Credit: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Vickers, team up to speed for '06 season

With squad firmly in place, driver ready to meet potential

Brian Vickers says he won't be giving the rest of the drivers in the Nextel Cup Series a three-month head start this year. In fact, he can't wait for the Daytona 500 to get here.

	Inside the Numbers Brian Vickers in 2005 Starts 36 Wins 0 Top-5s 5 Top-10s 10 Poles 1 Laps Led 315 Avg. Start 16.5 Avg. Finish 19.7

"When we went to Daytona in February [2005], it was like we had already run the race before the race even started," Vickers said. "There was so much going on during the last off-season with the new 5-25-44 building [for the teams of Vickers, Kyle Busch and Terry Labonte], new personnel and everything else that there was no time to catch your breath.

"I don't think we caught ourselves up until the third or fourth month of the season," he said. "We're better prepared now and I think the results will reflect that."

The numbers reflect that. Vickers had 10 top-10s in 2005, but most of them came in the 13-week stretch that ran from Dover in June to Fontana on Labor Day weekend.

Crew chief Lance McGrew expects the run to start considerably earlier this season.

"It's not so much the experience at the tracks, the schedule, the travel or anything like that," said McGrew. "It's just the people and the fact we have an established team and procedures in place at the track and how we handle situations when they arise.

"All of that was up in the air at this point last year. There were all new guys, it was all new cars. Everything about it was new and we had to just feel our way through it," McGrew said. "We made a lot of mistakes and we fixed them along the way.

	ACCELERATION 2006 There's more to the new season than just driver changes. Read more about what to watch for as we rev toward Daytona.  •   Testing archive,  click here •   Complete coverage, click here

"This year we're starting at 95 percent, where last year we did everything just to get to the 95 percent level."

Still, the No. 25 team started Daytona testing a bit behind the 8-ball, as Vickers missed the three-day session in order to have hernia surgery. Former Busch Series champion David Green took Vickers' place in the car for the tests.

"I hate having to miss any time," Vickers said, "but given the timing of it all and making sure the impact was minimal, the conclusion was for me to have the surgery, skip Daytona testing and rest in order to be able to get back in the car for the Las Vegas test."

Even with the absence of Vickers, McGrew doesn't anticipate any problems during Speedweeks.

"We've been producing some fantastic new cars from the speedway group. We're fortunate enough to be able to go to Daytona with two new cars. It's exciting."

For the first time since the start of the 2003 Cup season, the No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports team arrived in Daytona with two brand new superspeedway cars. During the past two seasons, the team had either put only new bodies on the cars or used machines from the No. 48 team's inventory.

It seems to have paid off. Green ran consistently in the top 10 throughout the three-day test.

McGrew said the team is ready for whatever comes its way in '05.

"At this point of the year, you revisit the things you could have done better and focus on building upon the positives," he said. "There were just so many positive things to build upon from 2005, with being able to grow the team, having the crew mesh together and aligning the personalities to where they're the most productive.

"I feel like we cleared all of those hurdles last year and it's a relief not to have to go through that again. We built a lot of momentum from the middle part of the season on, and we're just going to keep on going."