HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Not surprisingly, where your team is located in the Nextel Cup Series' owner standings determines your feelings about NASCAR's current rule locking the top-35 owners into each race's starting lineup.

As soon as the checkered flag falls on Sunday's season finale Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, most owners who are outside the top 35 won't need a calculator to figure out how dreadful the emotional lead-up to Speedweeks 2008 will be.

In 2007, beginning with the sixth race of the season, the current top-35 owners were locked into the 43-car lineup. At the beginning of the season, the previous year's top 35 was been used to lock in the lineup for the first five races.

The same system may or may not be in place in 2008.

"Following the season, we'll sit down and evaluate all our procedures and how they affect our competitors, as we always do," NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said Sunday morning. "We'll determine if any adjustments are warranted, at that time."

Thus, Eddie Wood, co-owner of the No. 21 Ford fielded by Wood Brothers/JTG Racing, which will probably be the first car on the outside of the top 35 at the end of this season, assumes the week-to-week, if not minute-to-minute fact of having to qualify each weekend as "something you just can't get away from" is something that isn't going away.

"If you ever raced in this series, it's the most aggravating thing you'll ever do," Wood said. "It's the most aggravating, mind-boggling, depressing -- every word you can think of.

"You wake up thinking about it and you go to bed thinking about it, because if you're not careful, it'll just consume everything you do -- because when you get right down to it, everything you do depends on it.

"It would do everybody who's in this garage good to go through it one time -- though I don't want anyone to go through it, but you would appreciate the better times, or when things are going well for you.

"Because being out of the top 35 is about as bad as it gets."

Wood said Saturday he's unsure of the exact combination driver lineup for his car next season, though its sponsorship package is mostly in place. Wood's car has spent most of this season outside the top 35, where it fell following the second race, after Ken Schrader finished 35th at Daytona and 36th at California.

Bill Elliott, the 1988 Cup champion, is in Wood's car this weekend, as he has been 19 other times this season since he had a past champion's provisional starting position as a hedge against the car not qualifying -- as it did at Talladega and Richmond in the spring.

Bill Davis Racing's No. 22 Toyota, driven by Dave Blaney, has alternated the hot seat position with the Woods' car from the mid-point of the season. Each has actually had the notable achievement of racing their way back into the top 35, after falling out, twice.

Elliott used only one of his allotted six champion's provisionals in his first 15 races and did manage to wedge the No. 21 back into the top 35 for a short span.

Later, the 22 and 21 swapped positions three times, with Davis' gang finally knocking the 21 out of the top 35 after Talladega. Elliott has been in a tailspin lately, using four 43rd-starting position provisionals in his past five starts, including Homestead.

Bill Elliott

Blaney and Elliott were the only two drivers besides Kasey Kahne who were able to get their cars back into the critical top 35 after falling out, this season.

Given that Blaney's owner, Davis, is 136 points ahead of Elliott's owner Glen Wood, and that the 21 has not out-pointed the 22 in any race this season by that much, it's all but assured the 22 will go to Speedweeks locked into the Daytona 500 while the Wood/JTG car, which has four Daytona 500 victories to Davis' one, will have to qualify.

"This team is in a pretty good position heading into Homestead as far as the top-35 points battle is concerned," Blaney, who'll start 23rd Sunday, said. "Barring something really unexpected, we should be able to walk away knowing we are locked into making the first five races next season, and that's huge.

"The pressure of knowing we had to race our way into the Daytona 500 would have made for a really stressful offseason, so we're hoping all goes well [Sunday]."

Rick Hendrick, who has already locked up his seventh Cup Series championship heading into Sunday's finale, has lived life on both sides of -- and earlier this season -- right on top of the fine line that separates the "haves" and the "have nots" in Nextel Cup.

Given the fact that the lowest placed of his four teams is driver Casey Mears' No. 25 Chevrolet in 16th, and going into Sunday's event Hendrick's teams had already won half the series' races, Hendrick supports maintaining the status quo.

"I was 35th in points with Casey early in the year, so I know what sweating qualifying is like," Hendrick said of the two races he spent in that position, following Phoenix and Talladega in the spring. "And I've been to the racetrack with no sponsor, and was one race away from shutting the doors, in 1984, and there wouldn't be a Hendrick Motorsports.

"So trust me -- I look at those guys [outside the top 35] and I feel it, every time I see them. I don't know how to change the system. I feel it's a good system -- if you're top-35 you're locked, and everybody has an opportunity to do that.

"I've looked at Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs and those guys, when they were winning races and we weren't -- and trying to figure out how to be better. I know how the rest of the competitors feel.

"I'm amazed that we've won that many races this year, because we've lucked into a lot of races. We've had a lot of races we shouldn't have won, that we did win. I was kidding J.D. Gibbs about going by the hospital every Monday morning to get the horseshoe sewed back in so it doesn't fall out.

"But the worm's gonna turn and you just have to accept getting beat and running through a dry spell. Fortunately, we've won a race every year we've been in [Cup racing], and hopefully we can continue, and with the talent we have, I think we will."

Blaney acknowledged the role his team had played in getting him into a position in which he could concentrate on racing better, rather than qualifying for their lives.

"I like to think we'll start 2008 with a little better luck than we did this season and not dig ourselves into such a hole," Blaney said. "All the guys on this team have worked unbelievably hard this year and we've really been under a lot of pressure.

"We've had our ups and downs and we're hoping to finish the season off on a high note."

Kyle Petty, who late in the season fell near the top-35 cutoff but never actually fell out of locked-in status, and came to Homestead a safe 165 points clear of the Wood/JTG car -- with 161 the maximum a team can make up in one race -- put a postscript on his team's late-season philosophy.

"Our cars had been great over the last several races, but we needed to finish the season strong," Petty said. "I'm really proud of how the guys responded. We've locked ourselves into the first five races next year and that is a big relief.

"Now we can just race our tails off at Homestead. We don't have to be cautious or hold anything back. It'll be kind of like the all-star race for us -- just go out there and let the rough side drag."

Petty also addressed the ramifications of next Speedweeks being the 50th Daytona 500.

"It's hard to believe that the next time we go to the track for a race weekend, it will be the 50th Daytona 500," Petty said. "Everyone always puts a lot of time and effort into the Daytona 500 [and] there will be more than ever during this offseason.

"We will have a lot of eyes on us next year. Plus, the race will be run with the new [Car of Tomorrow]. Looking back over my career I can't think of a more important winter than the one coming up."

And this is from a driver locked into the top 35. Every other owner who plans to be at Speedweeks has even more to contemplate.