Officials check Montreal's surface after morning rain

MONTREAL -- Concerns about the surface of Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, particularly the exit of the hairpin turn at the north end of the track, forced a delay in the action Friday afternoon while officials debated the situation.

The culprit? A heavy rain Friday morning, combined with a patch of the asphalt racing surface.

"It's somewhere where there's been some work that's been done," track spokesman Normand Prieur said. "It kind of looked like it might deteriorate before the end of the day because of the shower we had this morning at a time when the track was very, very warm."

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

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• Viewer's Guide: Montreal
• Garage Pass: North of Border

The problem appeared just after the Busch Series completed its first practice session, which was delayed because of the shower. While cars for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series waited to qualify, NASCAR officials inspected the area and pronounced it fit for racing.

"NASCAR officials are on the case of checking out the whole thing and basically we're going with their observations from this point forward," Prieur said.

There were no further complications and the schedule continued without further delay.

Send in the replacements
While Robby Gordon's car sat under cover in the garage area Friday, five other Nextel Cup drivers allowed their understudies to take to the track.

In the first practice, Brandon Miller ran 19th in Kevin Harvick's Chevrolet, while Scott Wimmer turned seven laps and was 20th in Jeff Burton's Chevy.

In Happy Hour, John Andretti, Casey Atwood and Mark Green put a few laps on the odometer of cars for Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and David Reutimann, respectively.

Pit practice for Papis
While most drivers were getting acclimated to the 14-turn road course, open-wheel veteran Max Papis was practicing pit stops.

Papis, who will drive the No. 1 Chevy for James Finch this weekend, was working on hitting his marks, stopping the car at the sign and then accelerating out of his pit stall.

Papis was pretty good on the track, too, running the fourth-quickest time in Happy Hour behind Patrick Carpentier, Michael Valiante and Marcos Ambrose.

Just scraping by
While David Ragan was at Pocono, his No. 6 Ford was undergoing a few repairs. Apparently at some point on Thursday, Ragan damaged the rear end of his car -- and the crew was busy putting the finishing touches on the new vinyl appliques.

Chances are good Ragan -- and several other cars in the garage -- found the wall coming out of Turn 14. That's the narrow chicane heading back to the start/finish line, and there's a long, wide black smudge at the exit.