Qualifying Rained Out With 14 Cars Left To Attempt Time Trials

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Boris Said got the shaft. Brian Vickers got a gift. Friday’s qualifying session kept the go-or-go-home teams sweating it out.
Fourteen of the 53 cars hadn’t yet taken their turn when rain soaked Daytona Int’l Speedway. Per NASCAR rules, all cars entered in any race must be allowed to attempt a qualifying run for the session to count. And once NASCAR officials ruled that rain wouldn’t be letting up anytime soon and time trials were a lost cause, qualifying was called and the rulebook set the starting lineup based on car- owner points.
That meant Said, who had been fastest in his bid for his second-straight Pepsi 400 pole, went home. Three of the top-seven qualifiers were sent packing.
“We have a fall-back plan. It’s something the whole industry knows about,” NASCAR President Mike Helton said Saturday. “They understand coming into the event that if qualifying doesn’t happen as scheduled and everybody that was supposed to qualify doesn’t qualify, we start over with the rulebook. That’s a known entity. It is unfortunate, but the whole industry and the garage area knows that’s the way we do it.”
While rain snubbed Said, Jeremy Mayfield and Michael Waltrip, it helped Vickers sneak into the field. He already had been eliminated but stole the first provisional spot carrying the official title “2006 race winner.”
Vickers won last October’s race at Talladega.
“We’re upset we didn’t have a better car,” said Doug Richert, Vickers’s crew chief. “The next thing we could hope for was exactly what we got — the rain. We got it. Something went our way. We’ll take this little piece of momentum and run with it a little bit.”
Rain washed out Friday night’s Busch Series race, too, and it was rescheduled for Saturday morning. Helton admitted the logistics of that event factored into the decision to nix qualifying.
“We needed to be focused on getting (the Busch race) in today,” Helton said.
The top 35 in the current car-owner standings made up positions one through 35. Naturally, leader Jeff Gordon rolled off first, with Denny Hamlin alongside. After Vickers came the past champion’s provisional. Those went to Dale Jarrett (37th) and Bill Elliott (38th).
The final five spots were awarded to Scott Riggs (39th), Dave Blaney (40th), Paul Menard (41st), David Reutimann (42nd) and Kenny Wallace (43rd). They had attempted to qualify for all 17 events this season and were lined up based on their ranking in owner points.