They say it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. And for Michael Annett, driver of Germain Racing’s No. 15 Pilot Travel Centers/Hype Energy Drink Toyota Camry in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, that’s definitely true.

Thanks to a blown tire and electrical problems, the series rookie began his 2009 campaign in 35th place, seven laps down, at the Daytona season-opener. But he had no intention of letting that minor setback slow him down. Seven days later, he moved up from a 42nd-place start to finish 16th in California. A few weeks later he was knocking on the door of the top 10 with an 11th at Texas Motor Speedway. A bunch more finishes like that one and Annett’s dream of being the top rookie of 2009 doesn’t seem out of reach.

“I definitely would like to win the Raybestos Rookie of the Year,” he says. “The team and I want to be consistently running in the top 10 at the end of the year. If we can do that, we would definitely be in the running for rookie honors.

“We’re happy with some of the runs we’ve had, but we’re disappointed with some of the bad luck. The first two or three races, we had problems with cut tires or other cars cutting tires and taking us out. We’ve shown we can run up front and we’ve met our expectations a few times. It’s exciting as a driver to know you’re with a team that can run up front and get the job done.”

The 22-year-old from Des Moines, Iowa, has been working toward his current position pretty much all his life. He was born into racing - his family owned a World of Outlaws team and legend has it that he attended the Knoxville Nationals on his birthday. Which one? No, we mean the day he was born. Destiny, it would seem, has brought him this far. Destiny and working his way up through the ranks like all talented racers.

He began with the Silver Crown Series, then Late Models in 2006, and added races in the ARCA RE/MAX series in ’07. There he scored his first – and Toyota’s first – ARCA win at Talladega with Bill Davis Racing. He scored another superspeedway triumph at the beginning of ’08 with a victory at Daytona. Also last year, he had eight NASCAR Truck starts, with a best finish of second at Kentucky, and made his Nationwide Series debut in the Homestead finale.

With his full-time effort in the Nationwide Series this year, Annett looks well on his way to eclipsing his hockey accomplishments in racing. Hockey? Oh yeah, it turns out he’s as adept on ice as he is on asphalt, having spent two seasons with the Waterloo Black Hawks in the U.S Hockey League. The USHL is sort of the equivalent of AAA baseball, and the Iowa-based team won the USHL’s championship, the Clark Cup, twice with Annett on the roster. But after two seasons, he switched to motorsports.

“Racing was in my family’s blood and I felt I’d done everything I could do in hockey, and there was an opportunity to test in the Silver Crown Series,” Annett says. “We got a late start, but we put our program in overdrive.”

So he’s had a steep learning curve. One thing he doesn’t have to learn is how to work within a team – hockey taught him that, he says. But there’s still a lot to digest, and running in the Nationwide Series, with its visiting Cup stars, can be a tremendous help.

“I definitely have the training I need, but I’ve probably also missed some steps on the ladder,” he says. “That’s why we’ve chosen the teams we have; teams that can really benefit a driver like me. In the Nationwide Series, you can learn so much from the veteran Cup drivers every weekend.

“It’s really not big things you learn, it’s the little things that you see them do and it clicks in your head and you think, ‘That makes a ton of sense.’ Just little things they do on a restart, and how they’ll charge at certain times and other times they’ll lay back a bit. You try it and see if it works for you; sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Although Annett and Germain Racing so far haven’t had quite the season they might have dreamed about, there have been many bright spots and the momentum is definitely building – “At Bristol, for example, we were really happy with what we had. We started toward the back and moved up. That’s tough to do at Bristol. Then we cut a tire with four laps to go and didn’t get the finish we deserved,” he says. And there’s plenty of time to gather a few more lessons before August.

August? That’s when the Nationwide Series makes its debut at Iowa Speedway. And although Annett now calls North Carolina home, his roots are in The Hawkeye State.

“My ultimate dream this year is to win the race at Iowa Speedway,” he says. “It’s about 20 minutes from my hometown and to win the inaugural race there would be huge.”

That might even make a few hockey fans pay attention.