1-shot teams taking stab at Daytona 500

With the economy on the skids and Sprint Cup Series race teams either folding up or merging, there was talk a few weeks ago NASCAR would have a hard time filling the Daytona 500 field. Think again.

It seems like a new entry or team entity is announced on a daily basis as Speed Weeks, Part II, rapidly approaches. It's obvious the lure of a fat check has caught the fancy of many of these one-shot race teams.

The car that finishes last in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 15 will pocket $250,000 in prize money. That's about $40,000 more in the envelope than Denny Hamlin got for winning the Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville, Va., last season.

With the mega-teams on their fourth generation of Car of Tomorrow, since the start of the 2007 season, there's plenty of equipment out there to work with, and a ready-made work force for these cars.

After the season finale at Homestead, more than 600 mechanics and fabricators lost their jobs, as teams disappeared or made severe employee cuts to trim their 2009 budgets. Several of those in the pink slip brigade are either working part-time or volunteering at these makeshift race shops. Daytona Beach News Journal