DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- For Boris Said, the difference a year made was leaving Daytona International Speedway on Friday night on Cloud Nine versus under a thunderstruck rain cloud.

Not surprisingly, with his No. 60 Ford in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400, Said's comments were way softer than they were a year ago -- or even as recently as Speedweeks 2008 -- when a strong run in his Daytona 500 qualifying race left Said short of getting into the season opener.

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To make this race, it's a big race. ... when we sat on the pole and finished fourth -- I tell everybody that was my 10 minutes of fame -- and I'm hungry to relive that again."

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BORIS SAID

"It's tough [because] I love this so much -- I'd like to race every weekend, so I just savor the moment every chance I get to race," Said said. "This is what I love to do and I love being a part of this series.

"Even though sometimes the rules make it harder for the part-time teams, it's the best game in town and that's where I want to be, so we won't ever let anything get us down -- whether it rains out or we just don't make the show -- we'll keep coming back hard and trying for our sponsors."

That's why Said, who was sitting on the pole for the 2007 version of this mid-summer event when rain wiped out qualifying and put his part-time No Fear Racing team on its transporter when it couldn't earn a starting spot per the rule book's parameters, was ecstatic Friday.

He earned the seventh starting position for Saturday night's mid-season feature, while much-higher-funded teams from Haas CNC Racing and Hall of Fame Racing went home.

There was no recovering 2007, but Said was definitely enjoying the moment.

"I would've given anything last year just to line up 43rd," Said said, smiling ruefully.

"It's just the rain here, in the summer, is just a crapshoot -- there were small showers everywhere -- and this year, we just got lucky."

Said and his team will have to manufacture a different brand of luck on Saturday night. Since Daytona is a rare Cup impound race, the team had to run a qualifying setup to guarantee a chance to make the race.

Such a setup typically won't work well in a racing draft, so Said said he would probably give up his starting position and drop to the rear of the field during Saturday night's pace laps.

"It makes it pretty impossible [to win] because we have a lot of things we need to change," Said said. "We'll probably drop to the rear, out of respect for the guys who are racing for a championship, because chances are we're going to be pretty tight at the beginning of the race and you've got to hope for an early yellow to start changing stuff.

"They won't let you make changes out of the impound procedure and they won't let you come in on the pace laps, either. It's just the way the rules are, and all the [go or go home] guys are probably in the same boat.

"It makes it more exciting, but pretty hard to win. Even if things were perfect and we started [seventh], it would still be a long-shot for us to win, but we're in it, we've been competitive and hopefully we'll be there at the end."

Said's race opened on Friday.

In a typical mid-summer Daytona Beach day, dirty clouds scudded through the sky over the speedway all day long and rain drops actually spat down near the end of Nationwide Series qualifying, which ran just before the Sprint Cup session.

The relief in Said's voice when the final Cup car ran was enormous. Along with the disappointment from a year ago, Said's team also was shut out of the Watkins Glen road race later in the summer when qualifying was rained out there -- though he made the race when Bill Elliott stepped out of the Wood Brothers' car in deference to Said.

"No rain clouds this year [but] they were hovering all around [Friday] and I was so nervous about it," Said said. "Thank goodness we got in and got a chance to qualify. We've been snake-bit so much by weather with our small team, you know?

"We always perform, we've got great cars. Our relationship with Roush Fenway is priceless, and [crew chief] Frankie Stoddard, this is his deal, qualifying. I just sit in the seat and don't do so much in qualifying here, but I'm really proud to be driving here."

Said was devastated two weeks ago at Infineon Raceway -- one of only eight NASCAR races he's scheduled to do this season between the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series -- so making this race was even more important, he said.

"It's huge," said Said, who won the pole for this race two years ago. "At Infineon, it was such disappointment on Lap 5 to have an O-ring go on the master cylinder and lose all the front brakes. When you don't get to race every weekend, it's heartbreaking -- especially at a racetrack where you have a chance of winning."

Said, who has performed well at Daytona in the past, said he probably wouldn't have a chance to win Saturday night.

So for him, cliché though it might be, Friday's qualifying session was his first victory of the weekend.

"To make this race, it's a big race," Said said. "A few years ago when we sat on the pole and finished fourth -- I tell everybody that was my 10 minutes of fame -- and I'm hungry to relive that again."