The 2007 NASCAR season has officially started, as teams competing in the Nextel Cup Series arrived in Daytona Beach, Fla., for the beginning of Speed Weeks. The upcoming season is one for the ages as Toyota prepares to make its debut in Nextel Cup racing. 
Leading the charge for Team Camry is the 1999 Cup Series champion Dale Jarrett and the #44 UPS Team.
As a past champion, Jarrett is guaranteed a starting spot in the Daytona 500 as a result of the past champion's provisional, created to ensure that former champions competing in the sport would be able to start a race if issues developed during qualifying. NASCAR officials elected to alter the past champion's provisional for the 2007 NASCAR season. During the last few seasons a former champion could use the provisional an unlimited number of times. Beginning this year, however, former champs will only be allowed to use the provisional a total of six times. Jarrett doesn't see that as a major issue for the UPS Team.
"Honestly, if we have to use it six times then we have bigger problems," Jarrett explained. "Is it a nice perk for being a champion? Absolutely and it is one I believe that we have earned as champions of the sport. But that provisional was not a determining factor for me when I made the decision to join Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) and it is our intention that when we get to Homestead at the end of the year we will still have those six provisionals left to use."
While the Daytona 500 and Speed Weeks will dominate the newspaper headlines throughout the month of February, the real news of the season will develop once the series arrives at California Speedway for the Auto Club 500. California is considered one of the many "intermediate" tracks where downforce, aerodynamics and horsepower are the deciding factors in which teams succeed. Comprising another large portion of the schedule are races that are now being called "COT races" in which teams will be competing with the yet to debut Car of Tomorrow (COT).
The COT is a product with which NASCAR officials and competitors hope to achieve slower speeds and better racing.
"I can't wait to see what the COT does," Jarrett said. "It will knock a couple seconds off the speed overall. That's a lot. That's the difference between racing on the flat track we had here before and the banks we have now. I think everybody ought to anxiously be looking forward to the hope that maybe the COT will provide slower speeds and a little bit better racing."
The benefit for Team UPS in regards to the COT is that it is the one area in which their team is on the same foot with the other teams, since it is a new program for all teams in Nextel Cup Series. When it comes to the superspeedway races and intermediate track races, they are going up against organizations that have years of experience and research. The result is a learning process for Team UPS and MWR. The biggest thing against Team UPS is time.
"We just need to get more time in at tracks when we can," Jarrett said. "We can get to victory lane I think. Not having as much testing, that's going to hurt us a little bit. But I honestly think that we can get to victory lane. We just have to do the extra tests at tracks like Lakeland or Nashville because being in real track situations is the only way we're going to be able to really see how the things we're seeing in the wind tunnel play out."
Despite the hurdles confronting the team for 2007, Jarrett believes the right attitude can and will carry the team and organization far. "Positive attitude is first and foremost, in addition to understanding what is at hand," Jarrett said. "This is a huge task. Looking at starting a two car team would have been large enough, but jumping into three certainly made us look at things a lot differently because when we do things now we have to look at that many more people and this business is all about people. There couldn't be a more difficult time in this sport to be bringing something like this because of the excitement. There are a lot of car owners involved, a lot of great sponsors involved and obviously along with that comes very good race drivers. This is a very difficult time but we're prepared to handle all of that and I think that we're prepared for success. I think that's going to let us handle what bumps we do encounter."
