Rain washes out Winston Cup practice

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Rain and thunderstorms that began early Friday afternoon and lasted more than four hours caused NASCAR officials to cancel the last two practice sessions for Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

Track drying for Friday night's Busch Series Stacker 2/GNC Live Well 250 began at about 5:30 p.m. ET. Little more than an hour later, NASCAR Winston Cup director John Darby announced practice was cancelled.

Thus, the 17th of 36 Winston Cup races this season will begin Saturday at 7:30 p.m. after the 43 starters had less than two hours of practice before Friday morning's rain-delayed Bud Pole Qualifying session.

Most top drivers expressed no concern over the situation prompted by the typically volatile mid-summer Florida weather.

Mark Martin, one of five drivers competing for the $1 million Winston No Bull 5 Bonus available to a companion fan and either him, Ricky Rudd, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon or Ricky Craven if they can win the Pepsi 400, said the practice already run would be sufficient.

"I'm comfortable without practice," said Martin. "This is Daytona. We've all been here before (and) the cars change less here than at most places we go to. Handling is not as critical here as it is at Charlotte or some of the other, shorter race tracks."

"We've got a good starting spot for the race on Saturday night and we've got a good race car," defending Pepsi 400 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "It'll be a lot of fun to be up front all night instead of having to work our way on up through there."

Earnhardt Jr. will start his No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet ninth.

"We wanted to find out if the car was as good as it always is," Earnhardt Jr. said. "Hopefully we won't have any trouble dialing it right in. We're gonna run the same set-up we did in the (Daytona) 500 and I think we had a great car before we had the flat tire."

Winston Cup cars practiced for 40 minutes Thursday before rain curtailed the session. After a four-hour delay, NASCAR and speedway officials postponed Winston Cup qualifying until Friday morning and then ran a one-hour Winston Cup practice and a one-hour Busch Series final practice Thursday night.

Kevin Harvick won his first career Winston Cup Bud Pole in his 51st attempt Friday morning.