Penske Racing looks ahead to ’09

A year that began with so much promise hasn’t turned out very well for Penske Racing’s Sprint Cup team.

Heading into NASCAR’s Saturday night race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman -- finishing out his run with Penske before joining Tony Stewart’s new team in 2009 -- is 15th in the points, former series champion Kurt Busch is 18th and Sam Hornish Jr., making the transition from open-wheel to stock cars, is 37th in the all-important car owner points and still without a top-10 finish in 31 career Cup starts.

That’s why Busch, Hornish and David Stremme, who will replace Newman, spent an arduous day of testing at Kentucky Speedwaylast week, going through a whole list of items intended to make their 2009 considerably brighter.