Frustration builds as two MWR cars crash in quals (cont'd)

Norris seemed as frustrated and as disappointed about Reutimann's wreck as he was with Waltrip's messy exit.

"I think he was going into Turn 3. I don't know if the car darted on him or what, but it looked like he got the left-side tires on the apron," Norris said. "I don't know if the car took him down there or what. But once he got the tires on the apron, it was pretty hard to recover.

"That certainly appears to be what happened with the wreck. I'll have to talk to him to see what happened with the car the whole lap. It's just difficult. I don't know what took him down to the apron, but something took him down there and got him turned around."

On the rare positive side for MWR, Jarrett made the race by turning a lap of 182.389 mph. Jarrett already has used up his six provisional starts for being a past Cup champion, and had failed to qualify for the previous two races -- breaking a string of 424 consecutive Cup starts that had dated to October 1994.

"I was real happy about that," Norris said. "That team, I've noticed, is getting better. Other people don't really have a chance to see it that much. But he and [new crew chief] Jason Burdett are doing a real nice job together.

"We saw some good things at the All-Star race the other night. Dale really ran some competitive laps. So we felt good about that and we brought that car back. And Dale told us, 'Don't look at the time sheet. I'm going to be fine when it's time to go.' He felt pretty confident that the car was drivable. What I'm happy to see is that when you give him something that's drivable, he gets the job done."

The night on the whole, though, was another tough one for Norris and MWR.

"I really, really, really thought Reutimann was going to be in the show," Norris said. "It's just a shame how it all shook out there.

"The way these qualifying rules are, it's tough. Everybody has to drive harder than they feel comfortable with sometimes to make it. Sometimes you make it back to the checkered [flag] and sometimes you don't. And two of ours didn't."