Daytona is over. Let the real season begin.

That has been the prevailing theme this week as the NASCAR Sprint Cup series moves to Southern California for the Auto Club 500 today.

"I think the only thing you can take out of Daytona is momentum and points," three-time Auto Club Speedway winner Jeff Gordon said.

The season-opening Daytona 500 is NASCAR's Super Bowl. But it's also one of only four Cup races run each season with restricted engines. The combination of less horsepower and the big tracks at Daytona and Talladega makes the events unique.

Cup teams prepare the entire winter for Daytona, building special cars with special engines.

Then, suddenly, it's on to a whole new world -- the 2-mile oval at Auto Club Speedway and the 1.5-mile tracks at Las Vegas and Atlanta the next two weeks. Those tracks are the models for most of the venues on the 36-race Cup schedule, so the race today should begin to answer some questions.

"This is the first time all year that we get to go out and run and we're not depending on everybody else around us," two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart explained. "I do feel like this is really the first true test of where everybody is at, and a truer read to the season than just Daytona.

"You get big groups of wrecks [at Daytona] that you can get caught up in easily, and the draft plays such a big role, where here, it's more about individual performances, where who paired up with who and got going."

Adding to the intrigue coming to Fontana is the testing ban that NASCAR imposed over the winter to help the team's bottom lines during the economic crunch.

That gave drivers and crew members some unexpected free time over the winter, but it also raised even more questions for the teams.

"The whole garage is anxious about it," longtime Cup star Jeff Burton said. "If they're not, they're foolish.

"You have no idea what you have until this race is over," he said after the opening practice session. "You could run terrible today and run well on Sunday. You could run great today and run terrible on Sunday. You don't know where you stack up against your competition until you get to compare yourself against your competition. We haven't done that yet."

Three-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and 2008 runner-up Carl Edwards, the drivers expected by many to vie for this year's title, got off to so-so starts at Daytona.

Edwards was never really a contender and wound up 18th, while Johnson battled a tire problem throughout the race and finished 31st.

"Last week did not end up the way we wanted, but it was cool that Ford was in Victory Lane," said Edwards, who saw Roush Fenway Racing teammate Matt Kenseth win.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he regretted clipping Brian Vickers' car and sparking a huge wreck in the Daytona 500 a week ago, but NASCAR's most popular figure also defended his aggressive driving.

"I've made mistakes before, and it probably won't be the last one I make," Earnhardt said. "I hate that it wrecked all them cars," Earnhardt said, adding that he called Vickers this week "to make sure he knew it wasn't intentional."