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With all the movement of the 2011 off-season, there’s ample opportunity for fresh starts in 2012. It may even pave the way for a breakout star in the mold of Brad Keselowski in 2011. Interestingly enough, 2012’s breakout racer may very well be his new teammate.

He appears to have it all now: he’s got a racer’s name, a racer’s look, a pretty wife at his side, and an improving performance. All he needs now is to to start producing wins, the same way Keselowski did last summer. A.J. Allmendinger now stands in the best position he’s ever been in to have a breakthrough in 2012.

2012 Sprint Cup odds...oh how I've missed you.

The numbers are out. And even though there have been three whopping days of testing at Daytona, the numbers will surprise you. Here are three driver ranked too high and too low.

What an offseason! There hasn't been this much movement since lightning hit the revival tent. With all the postseason silliness and some of the goings on out on the track, there’s plenty of suspense going into 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

With great interest, here's what this observer is watching….

Daytona, how we’ve missed you.

The 2012 season took its first visible steps with testing this past weekend. Normally, testing developments are minor…at best.

But when there’s snow outside the yard, sunshine in Florida and a clock ticking down to the 500, it’s more than reasonable to examine three intriguing developments coming from this past weekend.

It’s not the first time the question has been asked, but lacking a satisfactory answer, it seems worth another go. Yes, I know they race with a slightly different car, and there are some different drivers than what you see in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and they even race on different tracks every once in a blue moon.

Aside from that, it looks like it’s a hybrid test session/audition for the Cup series. Unless you’re just a hard core racing nut (after all, there are only so many hours in a weekend), it hardly seems worth the effort. For the sake of disclosure, they lost this fan about three years ago, with a couple of exceptions.

It wasn’t always like this. You don’t have to look hard to find fans who remember names like Jack Ingram, Tommy Ellis, and Sam Ard and if you go back further to the series forerunners- the Sportsman and the Late Model Sportsman Divisions- you can scare up names like Butch Lindley and Ralph Earnhardt. It evolved along the way, but there was something of a distinctive identity, whether it was the tracks, the cars, or even the drivers. Sure, there was some crossover, but if you watch highlight footage from the old days, there are some definite differences.