Stan Barrett gives up seat to get car in Mexico race

Stanton Barrett's plan to field a car for his father in Sunday's Corona Mexico 200 Nationwide Series race hit a series of speed bumps that will keep 64-year-old Hollywood stuntman Stan Barrett out of the car when the field takes the green flag at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Stan Barrett

Limited in practice time on Friday, the elder Barrett was 42nd fastest of 43 drivers in the first practice session, so Kenny Hendrick qualified the car for Sunday's 80-lap race at the 2.518-mile road course, which is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. ET. On Saturday afternoon, the Barretts made the decision to start Hendrick in the car Sunday (he'll start 38th) and to focus their efforts on fielding a car for Stan Barrett at the August road-course event in Montreal.

"My dad wants to focus on practicing some, testing, going to Montreal and race and not get in a race situation with not knowing the car really well," Stanton Barrett said. "We've really got to go test. We're a little bit more behind than we thought.

"It bummed me out a lot. Not being acclimated with the track and getting enough seat time is really hard, not knowing what your car is going to do. ... I had really hoped we would both be in the race and have a good time and give him the opportunity to race.

"We will go do another one and give him more time to test. We went through a lot with NASCAR and our transmissions being wrong -- they had problems with our system -- and that put [us] behind. Then we had a braking problem and missed [most of the first practice Friday]. That wasn't fair to him. But it's not the end of the world."

The good news for Stanton Barrett is that both of his team cars will start on Sunday. Stanton qualified the No. 30 Chevrolet in 35th position.