When the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series returns to Daytona International Speedway for the Pepsi 400, it will be the 18th race of the 2007 season - the official halfway point of the 36-race schedule. The Lenox Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway one week earlier signaled the start of the 10-race stretch run to the 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup Series Championship. The teams that are vying for one of the 12 positions available for the Chase will compete in a pressure cooker-intense environment for the next several weeks as they try to position themselves as contenders for the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series championship.
While the top 20 or so teams that still have a legitimate chance of making the Chase battle it out, a number of other teams lumber forward dealing with a different kind of pressure that exists in the landscape of the NASCAR environment. That is the pressure of trying to qualify for Nextel Cup Series races on a weekly basis - a battle that exists among those teams that are outside the top 35 in owner points. All three Michael Waltrip Racing-owned teams have dealt with that pressure since the season started in February and have continue to deal with it as the season has progressed.
Like those drivers and teams in the top 12 in the point standings, Dale Jarrett was battling for championships just a few short years ago and won the championship less than eight years ago in 1999. During the course of the 2007 season, he has often times found himself reflecting on the pressure he felt when he was racing for championships during the late 90s and early 2000s.
"I don't think the pressure of racing for a championship was this tough," Jarrett has said of the pressure he and the UPS Team have felt trying to qualify for races. "Of course, this is a little fresher so it's easy to say that but I can tell you this is every bit as tough as battling for a championship."
While the pressure has intensified during the course of the season, the success of qualifying for a release has offered a great release of that pressure on a number of occasions such as when Jarrett placed the #44 UPS Toyota solidly in the starting field for the Toyota Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway after missing the previous two races on the schedule at Pocono Raceway and Michigan International Speedway, the latter of which is Jarrett's favorite track on the schedule. The 16th-place qualifying effort was the best starting position for the team in 2007 and Jarrett's best qualifying effort at Infineon since starting 18th there in 2000. For Jarrett, he found irony in the fact that he qualified so well for the road-course race after missing the race at his favorite track just one week earlier.
"It's kind of strange to qualify at Infineon so well and miss the race at Michigan," Jarrett said. "Infineon is probably my least favorite track just because we only road race twice a year and I've never really gotten a handle on the track at Infineon which is so different than Watkins Glen."
While qualifying for races like the one at Infineon Raceway have offered small victories for the UPS Team, they've had their share of defeats after failing to qualify for races at Richmond and Darlington in addition to the races in Pocono and Michigan.
Making a race after missing two in a row however, is an event in which Jarrett and the team feels a release of pressure although they knew in another week they'll be right back in the thick of a pressure cooker to qualify.
"You basically have one or two laps to get it done and that puts a lot of pressure on me and the guys," Jarrett said. "I'm so excited to be able to race when we do qualify for the guys and for UPS that you don't put too much thought on the race ahead even though it's just around the corner. I think for our team for the rest of the year we literally take each race one at a time and try to make the most out of each one and hopefully build a base for next season so that hopefully, we get started on a better foot and don't find ourselves in this position next season."
