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If change is something you gladly anticipate and accept, the 2008 NHRA POWERade Pro Stock Motorcycle season will surely make you ecstatic.

Everywhere you look, there's something or someone bringing a different focus to the '08 PSM picture -- and that usually leads to intriguing story lines and unexpected surprises.

Last year's POWERade champion, Matt Smith, however, is the one exception to that trend. The son of longtime Pro Stock driver and crew chief Rickie Smith, Matt plans on taking on his title defense in '08 at the head of his own operation, which won four races in 2007, scored five runner-up finishes and picked up four No. 1 qualifying starts.

Now, about those changes.

Antron Brown recently completed his Top Fuel licensing procedures, eliminating the final hurdle in his remarkable jump from Pro Stock Motorcycle to the sport's quickest and fastest category. Brown will be filling the seat vacated by Whit Bazemore last year and will race alongside teammate "Hot Rod" Fuller for David Powers' operation, which has just moved into a new shop facility in Brownsburg, Ind.

With the U.S. Army no longer sponsoring a two-bike effort at Don Schumacher Racing, Brown decided to switch his career path. His early performance reviews earned during preseason testing have all been favorable.

His former PSM teammate, three-time POWERade champion Angelle Sampey, also will be heading into a 2008 campaign riddled with change.

Sampey has signed on to race for the team of Karl and Kim Klement following their release of Peggy Llewellyn at the end of her impressive fourth-place points finish last year. The popular veteran Sampey, who wound up a distant fifth place in the POWERade points in '07, will be looking at a drag racing picture that combines the familiar with the unfamiliar. For the first time in her professional career, Sampey will be aboard a Buell rather than her trademark Suzuki, but leading her technical team will be her former boss, mentor and crew chief, George Bryce.

Meanwhile, last year's No. 3 rider in the points, Chip Ellis, has departed Bryce's G-Squared race team following a winless 2007 and will ride the lone motorcycle expected to carry the Don Schumacher Racing colors in 2008. Replacing Ellis at G-Squared will be Chris Rivas, who rode briefly for Matt Smith's title-winning team in '07.

Three-time POWERade champion Andrew Hines will be back in 2008 with teammate Ed Krawiec, who recently signed a two-year extension with the Vance & Hines "Screamin' Eagle" Harley-Davidson race shop. Both racers are determined to bring the PSM crown back to this legendary organization. Hines' first-round red light in the last race of 2007 cost him an unprecedented fourth consecutive championship, and he has made no secret of his all-consuming desire to atone for that miscue in 2008.

Personnel aside, last year saw domestic-built Harley-Davidson and Buell sweep four of the top five positions in the POWERade top 10. They are the bikes to beat, and the bitter rivalry that has erupted among the Harley-Buell-Suzuki adversaries will continue to splash high-octane fuel onto the competitive fires within the category.

And this year, with a bike schedule expanding from 16 to 17 national events, some of the newer and/or unheralded riders in the class will have greater opportunities to establish themselves.

The 2008 Pro Stock Motorcycle schedule gets under way March 13-16 at the AC Delco Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Gainesville, Fla.

Bill Stephens covers NHRA for ESPN.com