Vasser

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The influx into NASCAR of young drivers with open-wheel backgrounds has been well-documented. But what about those not-quite-so-young open wheelers?

CART star Jimmy Vasser made his pitch for some stock car recognition Wednesday by piloting his No. 30 Dodge to the fifth starting spot for Saturday's Koolerz 300 Busch Series race at Daytona International Speedway.

"The car was real quick here in testing," Vasser said. "The guys did a good job -- make a couple of little changes to help bring it up a bit. The car ran good. I was able to keep it low. It was a little bit better than I expected it could run, but I thought we could run pretty close to that. We're pretty happy."

Seeing Vasser, 37, atop a speed chart should be no surprise. But Wednesday's qualifying effort even caught him a bit off guard this early in his stock-car career.

"I thought maybe we could be in the top-10," said Vasser, who will start alongside Matt Kenseth on Saturday. "Top-five is certainly a great place to be. I think everybody plays a little game in not showing their hand totally in practice. I knew that we had a pretty quick car, but I'm real happy at this point with this time."

Vasser, the 1996 CART champion, will be running a full schedule in CART this season with Stefan Johansson's American Spirit team. But he'll also be making some appearances in NASCAR with Braun Racing, which is campaigning Busch cars for Vasser and Chad Blount (starting ninth Saturday) this weekend. And for the open-wheel veteran, becoming accustomed to stock cars is just part of a learning process.

And thus far, Vasser's experience this week at Daytona has pretty much gone according to plan.

"So far so good," he said. "Just learning how the race goes down. Getting to know the guys. I'm fortunate to be with a really good team, Braun Racing. We're looking forward to doing some drafting practice and Friday, too. I'm sure the race is going to be a real learning experience for me.

"I learn every day. I don't presume to know everything or even anything, really. But every day I get in the car I learn more. I've just got my eyes wide open and just trying to take it all in. Hopefully, I can do 10 of these Busch races this year and start getting some experience to set myself up for a potential transition to Winston Cup someday."

There was much uncertainty this past off-season as to whether Vasser would return to CART. A return to Bobby Rahal's outfit was unlikely and his current team didn't even exist yet.

With the Indy Racing League apparently not being an attractive option, Vasser began looking at NASCAR and stock car racing. And at one point the idea of seeing Vasser run a full Busch schedule in 2003 wasn't all that farfetched.

	Vasser will start fifth on Saturday.

"There were some potential deals for a full season," Vasser said. "Whether they could have come together or not remains to be seen. But the deal came to the front with Stefan Johansson's team in CART and I felt like that was the best thing for me. But I told them going in that I wanted to have the freedom to do as many on off weekends Busch or even Winston Cup races if they come up, and they said fine.

"So I think this is the best situation for me. Even with the possibility of running -- qualifying the second weekend at Indianapolis and running the 500."

So the distinct possibility that CART's Champ Car World Series would kick off in 2003 without any former champions (with Michael Andretti moving to the IRL) or American drivers was averted when Johansson created his team and signed Vasser and American Ryan Hunter-Reay as his drivers. And for a series that has plenty of new names and faces, Vasser's return is a sizable boon for CART.

"It's probably better that I am there than I'm not," Vasser said. "I don't know how important it is at the end of the day. But not only am I a past champion, but I'm one of the only two Americans. The other one is my teammate. I think it's kind of cool that our team is called American Spirit racing. I think there should at least be representation from our home country, you know? I'm proud of that. I'm looking forward to it. I think it was more important to have me there than to not have me there."

But first things first -- Saturday's race at Daytona. Vasser maintains he's just here for the experience, here to prepare himself for a possible NASCAR career. But could his strong performance in qualifying on Wednesday change his outlook on this weekend's race?

"No, not really," he said. "I came here to get some race experience. You always want to win a race. I'm not coming here to lose. But I'm here to get some race experience and I'm going to do that. That's my goal.

"If things are going well during the race -- I've been racing a long time and I've won some big races - if things go well and we're racing up front near then end, then I'm certainly going to try to win the race. But I really came here to start gaining some knowledge about stock car racing."

And when might he apply that stock car knowledge? Ask Vasser where he sees himself in three years time.

"Hopefully, I see myself as a Winston Cup competitor."