NASCAR Nationwide Series

Steve and his Rusty Wallace Racing teammates are, however, new to the Toyota Racing family for 2010 having made the switch during an off-season that also featured a new crew chief coming onboard to work with Steve in Scott McDougall. The switch to Toyota, in particular, made for a busy off-season prior to the season opener in Daytona, but Wallace sees it as a productive change.

“This switch to Toyota is just going to make the cars run just straight-up faster,” Steve says. “We’re going to be in positions to where the cars are running better. We’ve got a really good pit crew. We’ve got a really good crew chief. We’ve got the best trucks and trailers, the best pit boxes, the best everything. I know that we’re going to win a race, it’s just when we’re going to do it. We’re excited.”

The team’s transition to Toyota also benefited from the addition of McDougall, who is familiar with the program having worked with the Toyota-powered CJM Racing Nationwide Series team last year. McDougall previously worked for Evernham Motorsports and Dodge, and he knew what to expect as the team made the transition.

“I think at times it can be kind of overwhelming,” says McDougall of moving to a new manufacturer. “The beauty of the transition going to Toyota is that the overwhelming part is the tremendous amount of technical and engineering support that we get as a team with that manufacturer. I mean, probably right now, we spend as many days at the TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Tech Center as we do at our own shop testing and things like that. That’s overwhelming, but it’s a good overwhelming.”

The new relationship with Toyota also opened the door for the team to establish a technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing, the two time defending Nationwide Series team owner champion. JGR clearly knows a few things about how to get their Camrys around racetracks quickly and efficiently and that experience is definitely valuable to Rusty Wallace Racing.

“The deal with JGR came out late towards the end of the year,” Steve explains. “We got talking to them about putting our speedway bodies on and all the intermediate stuff, so that’s really another big deal. Those guys have got a lot of information. As a Nationwide team, they’ve been doing this stuff for years, a lot longer than we have.

“Just their notebook in general is huge, when it comes to their bodies and stuff. I feel like the Toyota cars, with the body builds that Gibbs have given us and the stuff that all the guys at Toyota have given us, the cars are a lot more balanced.”

Perhaps as a result of that balance, Wallace got his 2010 campaign off to a solid start at Daytona with a 10th-place performance in the season-opening Drive4COPD 300 on the day before the Daytona 500. It was his best run ever at Daytona.

It was a great way to start the season to be sure, but Wallace has high expectations from the 2010 campaign after finishing a career-best seventh in the 2009 Nationwide Series driver standings.

“I think this is the first year we’ve ever been in the sport where I know that we can win, without a doubt, for sure,” Steve says. “When we go into Homestead (for the 2010 season finale), I want to see a notebook of four or five wins and I really feel like we can do that. I know that I can do it. I’m more mature now. I know what I need in the race cars. I know what to feel. I know what to do, quit crashing stuff.”

McDougall concurs that the experience Wallace has gained to this point will be helpful to the team throughout the 2010 season. The crew chief was definitely impressed by what he saw in his young driver over the winter.

“One thing Steve’s really good at is he’s really focused and determined on what he wants to accomplish and what he wants to be,” McDougall explains. “Having accessibility to him to have conversations, to get input from him and for him to listen to direction that I want to see things go in has been very abundant in the off-season.”

Perhaps that focus and determination is a product of having a familiar environment. For Steve, the environment at Rusty Wallace Racing is the only one he’s ever known as a racecar driver, as he has driven for his father’s team for his entire racing career at every level. One of his goals, however, may take him to a new environment.

“It’s not set, but I’ve got a long-term goal in my head,” he says. “I know we’re going to win races this year, but I’d like to win some races and then halfway through the season have some Cup teams talk to me and hopefully be Cup racing next year. That’s my goal. Whether it happens or not is kind of out of my hands, so we’ll see.”

Of course, Steve also wouldn’t mind moving up to the Cup Series as a member of Rusty Wallace Racing, which is one of his father’s stated goals.

“That’d be really cool,” he says. “I would love to see that happen. Everybody knows the point that holds that up, it’s all cash and sponsorship. You know, 5-hour has been a really good sponsor for us for the past three years. It started off small and now it’s gotten to be a really big deal. I believe we’re the only car in the garage area with a full-time sponsor that picked up all 35 races.

“They’ve been a great sponsor to us. It’d be really cool to maybe see if they’d be interested here at the end of the year to run four or five Cup races. I think as a team, to be able to advance our program, we’ve kind of got to get our feet wet one step at a time in that deal. I don’t think you can just go and just jump in right off the bat.”

But first and foremost is the 2010 season, which just got underway. Wallace and the team clearly have their work cut out for them, but they’ve certainly got the right mindset to be successful.

“The big thing is just establishing a good foundation of what we’re taking to the racetrack,” McDougall says. “The goal that we really have in mind is, week-in and week-out, we go to the racetrack and Steve can’t tell what car we’re in because everything is the same. Everything is positioned the same. He can put that out of his mind. He just has to worry about what he needs to make it go faster.”