Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

FONTANA, Calif. (February 20, 2009) -- The pressure hasn't lifted completely from AJ Allmendinger's shoulders -- he still must qualify on speed for the first five events of the Sprint Cup season -- but after a third-place finish in last Sunday's Daytona 500, you can sense the relief in his voice.

Allmendinger is set to drive the first eight races of the season in the No. 44 Richard Petty Motorsports Dodge. Beyond that, he will compete in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona in July. The key element to expanding Allmendinger's schedule is finding additional sponsorship for his car.

The finish at Daytona certainly helped, and Allmendinger hopes to build on that success.

"I think we showed as an organization that we'd be a great team to have a sponsor come on board and help us out," Allmendinger said Friday at Auto Club Speedway. "As of right now, we still only have the eight races, plus the Daytona race -- basically we have the nine races.

"The deals are out there, and I think that there's pressure every week. You've got to go out there and show that it's not a one-week fluke and go out and perform. I told them I'd do anything. I'd even cook them dinner. Well, maybe my wife would -- I can't cook."

BURTON FOUND NASCAR FANS ON "GH" SET
One day on the set of the hit soap opera "General Hospital," and driver Jeff Burton is thinking like an actor -- he's already talking about "motivation."

Burton didn't understand why he was asked to make a cameo appearance at a bar in Port Charles, the city in which "General Hospital" is set.

"I don't know why I was there," Burton said. "That wasn't part of the script, but I was there. I wandered into a bar. I don't know why, but I was there."

On the set, Burton found plenty of people who wanted to talk about NASCAR racing.

"There was a lot of race fans there, a lot of guys that had die-casts that they wanted signed and pictures they wanted signed," Burton said. "A lot of people had kids and cousins and nephews and stuff like that who wanted autographs.

"There was actually a lot of interest. A lot of questions, 'How does this work? How does that work?' Some people were coming out to the races -- a lot of guys on the set told me they had tickets every year and they were coming out to the race. There were a lot of race fans."

MEARS EXCITED ABOUT RETURN TO CALIFORNIA
For Casey Mears, the Sprint Cup season starts in earnest when the series comes to California, his native state.

"One thing about coming to California is that I have a lot of friends and family, and it makes it one of the races I want to win the most," said Mears, who grew up in nearby Bakersfield. "You have to look at Daytona as Daytona, and then you have to look at the rest of the season. There are so many different elements in Daytona that we don't have to deal with on a given race weekend. . .

"Obviously, we're dealing with cars that we can't tweak or tune that much, since there are a lot of set rules in Daytona. When you come to California, it's all so new, and you feel like now the season's starting. Now we can put what we want in these cars and really find out how we stack up against the rest of the field."