Shootout looms as Speedweeks set to begin

Speedweeks is about to get under way in earnest as cars take to Daytona International Speedway starting Friday for Budweiser Shootout and Daytona 500 practices leading up to Saturday night's 34th running of the Shootout. The annual exhibition may shed light on how the new faces will fit in their new places ahead of the season-opening Daytona 500, but plenty of questions still remain.

Some of the asking will start Thursday as the media converge for the 13th annual NASCAR Media Day, where drivers across all three national series will meet the press. Many questions are expected to be directed toward Kasey Kahne, one of the season's biggest wild cards.

The only drivers on more of a tear than Kahne during the home stretch of the Chase last season were title contenders Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. Kahne could have been content to play out the string as a placeholder driver for the lame-duck Red Bull Racing team, which shut its doors just weeks after the season ended. Instead, he closed out his one-year Red Bull stint with seven top-10 finishes in the last eight races, highlighted by a convincing win at Phoenix International Raceway in the penultimate event of the season.

Momentum may be an abstract concept, but for Kahne, the biggest intangible on his side heading into 2012 is stability. Even though Kahne was a constant at the wheel of a red No. 9 for the first seven seasons of his career, the last four of those were spent in the turbulence of team restructuring as Evernham Motorsports became Gillett Evernham Motorsports, which eventually merged into Richard Petty Motorsports.

With the uncertainty behind him, Kahne enters the season with a four-year deal at one of NASCAR's most powerful teams.

"I have four years here that I know it's going to be stable and be competitive and have great people and a great team around me," said Kahne, who finished last in the 2011 Shootout. "To be able to be a part of all that is something that I haven't had. It's definitely nice to have it, makes you feel pretty good about where you're at. It's taken time. I've had some really good years in Cup and I've learned a lot from everything, and now I'm just in a really solid situation and need to take full advantage of it."

The 75-lap Shootout also will offer a glimpse into how NASCAR's new aerodynamic package will perform in race conditions and whether the two-car push technique will turn, as expected, into a rarely used tactic. Friday's two practice sessions should reveal more.

What the Shootout won't do is necessarily predict a Daytona 500 champion; no one has swept both events since Dale Jarrett accomplished the feat in 2000.

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