Matt Kenseth was spared a provisional starting spot. Credit: Autostock

Rain helps Busch, Kenseth at Loudon

Teammates struggled mightily in qualifying

With all the buildup toward the inaugural NASCAR Chase for the Nextel Cup, qualifying on Friday turned out to be a bit of a bummer.

Rain washed out the session after just 16 cars had taken time, including several of the Chase contenders.

Ryan Newman lost a shot at the Bud Pole. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

Jeff Gordon, who leads the points headed into the Chase, will start first, while Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth will round out the top five. Next come Elliott Sadler, Kurt Busch, Mark Martin, Jeremy Mayfield and Ryan Newman will be the second five when the green flag waves.

Three of the Chasers had logged laps before the rains came. Earnhardt Jr. was the best of those, resting third. Busch was sixth despite wiggling like a Florida palm in the midst of a hurricane breeze, and Kenseth was a disappointed 10th.

"I didn't get into the corner hard enough at either end on either lap," Earnhardt said. "It won't be very good for long during the race, but it was a pretty good lap."

Earnhardt was 12th in practice, and his third-place start will be the third time in four races here he has lined up in that spot.

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The other was a sixth. Putting aside his 31st-place finish here in July -- Martin Truex Jr. was behind the wheel most of the day -- he is coming off finishes of fifth and sixth in the two races before that. He only has one other top-10 finish (9th in 2001).

Busch, driving the car he won here with in July, was the last driver to take time as the skies opened just as he finished.

He was 15th in practice and would likely have fallen far in the lineup had the rain not come. "That [canceling qualifying] would be the best thing that could happen to us right now because we won't be any better than seventh with that lap," Busch said.

"We were just slipping and sliding too much. We just wanted to pick up a half-a-tenth and we slowed up a half-a-tenth. In NASCAR Nextel Cup racing that will hurt you."

Kurt Busch won at NHIS in July. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

Busch, coming off his first NHIS victory in July, has a best start here of sixth, but started 32nd in July and won the race.

Kenseth, who was 11th in practice, was saved the most by the rain. His lap was disappointing, and fifth is better than the low 30s, where he might have wound up.

"That was terrible and definitely disappointing for me," Kenseth said. "We ran pretty decent in practice. My car felt solid, but the lap times aren't very fast. I must not have driven it hard enough, I guess. Usually smooth here is fast and we just didn't quite have the speed there."

Kenseth is working on a streak of five top-10 finishes in six races at NHIS, but he traditionally is not a good qualifier here.

He has a pole in the July 2001 race but has never won. In nine races, he has the pole and a sixth-place start.

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Perhaps the person most affected by the washout was Ryan Newman, who was fastest in practice by a healthy .719 seconds over Kasey Kahne.

Newman, who has never started worse than 16th here and has three poles in his five NHIS races, will start 10th.

One of the factors to keep in mind about Newman is that his worst finish in those five races was ninth, in last year's fall race. All the rest have been in the top five, including a victory in 2001.

Gordon, who is among the best here, has four poles and four other top-three starts in 19 races.

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He sat on the pole and won the race here back in 1998, in the midst of an eight-race streak that saw him win twice and finish in the top six the other six races. In those 19 races, he has a worst start of 24th (in July), seven top-three finishes and 11 in the top 10 and an even 10 starts in the top 10. Starting on the pole won't hurt him at all, despite the fact that he hasn't finished better than 14th in five of the last six races here (he was second in July).

Johnson, who swept both 2003 races here, was 17th in practice but will start second. That's where he started here in July, on the way to 11th place at the finish.

In five races at NHIS, Johnson has two victories, a ninth-place run and has started no worse than eighth in the last four trips.

Just as Newman stood a good chance of taking the pole, fourth-place Tony Stewart was mired back in 26th after practice.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

By lining up on points, Stewart earned his best starting spot ever at NHIS with fourth. He started fifth twice, sixth once, and it does make a difference. In those top-five starts, Stewart has finished second, first and fifth.

In his 11 races at NHIS, Stewart has finished in the top five six times and in the top 10 seven times. Last season was not a good one for Stewart here, as he finished 22nd and 20th, respectively, but he was fifth here in June, so the trend is established.

Likewise, the rain was good for Elliott Sadler, who was 21st in practice. His seventh-place start matches his career best here, and he has just two top-10 finishes in 11 races. He was eighth here in the second 2003 event.

Mark Martin, perhaps the happiest of the 10 Chasers, was a respectable 14th in practice and will start eighth. That's his 12th top-10 start in 19 races here.

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He has seven starts in the top five, including two of the first three poles (1993 and 1995). His start this time ends a string of poor starts (26th and 33rd in the last two races), and he hopes the better starting spot will reverse a trend of poor finishes (14th, 28th, 18th, 16th and 16th in the last five races) as well.

"It was about a 15th-place car [in practice] maybe," Martin said. "I think we wound up 14th on the speed chart. We did some race setup and I was pretty satisfied with that.

"We did three short runs and then we went into qualifying trim and all the runs were real decent - certainly not a threat for a pole or a top five, but real reasonable.

"This is a race track that I've had a good bit of success on, but, at the same time, I've also struggled at as well. I'm pretty confident that we can come in here and have a reasonable showing, but this is not gonna be our strong suit."

Jeremy Mayfield, surprise winner at Richmond and the darling of the Chase set, would just as soon the first race of the Chase be somewhere else. He was sixth in practice, and he'll start ninth, but it hasn't seemed to matter much where he starts at NHIS.

Like Sadler, he's had just two top-10 finishes here, but one of them came in July (10th). His best finish, eighth, came in the first race in 2000. He started third here in the July race in 2001, but wound up 39th at the finish.