Quick Hits: Kansas Speedway

This week, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to Kansas Speedway, which will be the second-to-last track to feature the debut of the Car of Today.

This creates a lot of unknowns for teams and drivers, whether they’ve had past success at the track or not. Even a team such as Hendrick Motorsports, which has four wins over NASCAR’s big three series at the young track, is going into this race with a lot of questions about how the new car will handle.

Hendrick is a team about to make some big changes for 2009 and beyond. The biggest change involves the No. 5 Sprint Cup car, which will be driven by Mark Martin next season.

Martin will make his return to a full-time Sprint Cup schedule after two years of 24 races each, partially because his son, Matt, has decided to give up racing and focus on schoolwork. The departing driver of the No. 5 for this season, Casey Mears, will head to Richard Childress Racing and drive the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet.

However, the Martin deal was announced weeks ago, and everyone in the garage is aware of the change. Not a team to rest on its laurels, Hendrick is making some other moves for next season that may shock and surprise some: new paint schemes, other new drivers, and new sponsorship deals to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

An anonymous source provided the following information, which serves as this week’s five Quick Hits:

5. Jimmie Johnson will run a special paint scheme for his 250th career start at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in a few weeks. This new scheme, which features the addition of red to the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, will also supposedly be run in 2009 and beyond. The scheme is a lot less “sharp” than Johnson’s current car, and features more silver than the 2008 car does.

4. In a dramatic change from the first 16 years of Jeff Gordon’s Sprint Cup career, the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet will primarily feature black, as opposed to the usual navy blue and day-glo orange.

The flames on the car will change, fading from yellow to orange, and the National Guard will replace Nicorette on the lower quarter panels. No word on whether or not Nicorette will return to the team.

Gordon will likely run this scheme in 2010 as well, after which DuPont’s contract with the team runs out. Many are suggesting that Gordon will retire after the 2010 season, or scale down to a part-time schedule similar to what Martin currently runs.

The team hopes that development driver Landon Cassill will be ready to take over the No. 24 in 2011.

3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will run a special scheme at Daytona for Speedweeks that features the addition of silver to the current Amp Energy and National Guard car.

While it was originally suggested that the new color run the entire season, reports suggest that Amp didn’t want Dale Jr. fans to have to run out and buy new merchandise for the 2009 season. Thus, the scheme will only run one race.

The car will feature relatively minor changes to its paint scheme for 2009, with only a couple lines moved around. Earnhardt Jr.’s driving suit, however, will change in a more prominent way: the trademark Adidas triple stripe will grace the sleeves of his firesuit.

2. Klondike will move from Gillett-Evernham Motorsports’ No. 9 Nationwide Series Dodge to the No. 5 Nationwide Series car.

This team will again feature rotating sponsorships, with many of the current primaries (Delphi and GoDaddy.com among them) returning. The National Guard will reportedly scale down their involvement with this team, likely due to the shift in dollars towards Gordon’s car.

Cassill will spend some time in this car again next season, and Martin, Earnhardt Jr., and Johnson will likely also run selected events. However, the juiciest rumor in the garage regarding this team is the potential addition of Tony Stewart to the driver lineup for 2009. The assumption is that Klondike is leaving GEM to partner with Stewart at Hendrick.

1. The US Navy will be replaced on Brad Keselowski’s No. 88 Nationwide Series car by Craftsman Tools. Craftsman will not return to its primary sponsorship of the Truck Series beyond 2008, thus freeing up advertising dollars to partner with JR Motorsports.

Keselowski will use next season as another year of development, with a partial Sprint Cup schedule almost guaranteed as well. Keselowski will run 10 races in the No. 5 in 2010, with an eye on taking over full-time in 2011 for the likely retiring Martin.

Finally, congratulations to last week’s winners: Mike Skinner in the Truck Series at Las Vegas, and Greg Biffle in Sprint Cup and Kyle Busch in Nationwide at Dover.