FONTANA, Calif. -- Forget about last weekend's Daytona 500. Those special rules and unique style of racing do not carry over to what will happen tonight at Auto Club Speedway.

With so many races on 1.5 and 2-mile tracks similar to this speedway upcoming, many drivers say this is when they'll start to know who is going to be strong and who has work to do in the coming weeks.

Adding to the anxiety for some is that with teams not allowed to test at tracks that run NASCAR races, teams came into this weekend not sure how they compared to their competition.

"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,'' Tony Stewart says, alluding to how the draft keeps everyone together at Daytona.

"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."

Jimmie Johnson says he expects to see the same drivers running well as he did late last year at these types of tracks. The only difference is Stewart and Ryan Newman with the renamed and revamped Stewart-Haas Racing.

"It looks like we just continued last year,'' Martin Truex Jr. says.

"It is not a good thing for us. We kind of came here with some new stuff to try because we haven't tested and we knew we needed to get better on mile-and-a-halfs [tracks]. That is the only thing frustrating about the no testing thing; the guys that were fast last year still have that edge and it is going to be hard for us to catch up."

The main thing for Kyle Busch this week is that he can forget about Daytona where he was strong enough to win the truck, Nationwide and Cup races there but won none.

"It's fortunate that we're in this sport where it moves along so fast that we've got the chance to forget,'' he said.

Crowd control

Auto Club Speedway is as well-known for its empty patches of seats as anything, but Elliott Sadler has an idea on how to fill those seats.

"If I had anything to do with this race track, I would go to every single middle school within 50 miles of this place and give away free tickets,'' Sadler says. "What's the difference in an empty seat and a free ticket? You might sell a Coca-Cola to them in the stands.

"I would go to every Boys and Girls Club, the Girl Scouts, middle schools ... give away tickets.

"Give them a chance to come to this race that might not have come before. You might make a fan; you might not. If you don't make a fan, what have you lost? If you gain a fan, you maybe gain a couple tickets for next year.''

Pit stops

Jimmie Johnson was the fastest in the final practice session with a lap of 179.582 mph. He was followed by Denny Hamlin (178.280), Jamie McMurray (178.055), Mark Martin (177.567) and Greg Biffle (177.445). ... Reed Sorenson had an incident during Saturday's practice and damaged the right front of his car. He went to a backup car. ... Dale Earnhardt Jr. complained about transmission issues during practice and his team planned to change it after Saturday's practice.