Former Brickyard winner Elliott left out looking in (cont'd)

"We just fought everything," Elliott said. "It's just a bad deal with the way we ended up. I don't know. I think these guys have got a lot of good ideas, but until you go test and figure some of this stuff out, it's just hard to unload. We lost 30 minutes of practice [Friday], and sometimes you're better off not to know. Just go."

Kyle Petty, whose six-race stint as a television analyst ended in the most recent Sprint Cup event, had originally been scheduled to return at Indianapolis. But the team announced earlier this week that Labonte, the 1996 series champion, would be in the No. 45 car at the Brickyard to ensure it appeared in one of the sport's biggest events. That left Elliott, the 1988 champion, on the outside looking in after his qualifying lap wasn't fast enough to make the field on its own. The past champion's provisional goes to the most recent past champion attempting to make the field.

"You don't even think about that," Wood said. "This had been scheduled for Bill for a long, long time. This is just where it wound up."

It was a much better day for some other drivers outside the top 35. Gillett Evernham driver Patrick Carpentier, a former open-wheeler who finished 21st in his lone Indianapolis 500 start for Eddie Cheever in 2005, will start his first Brickyard event in 15th. And Ambrose, who raced for the Wood Brothers at Sonoma but failed to make the field at New Hampshire in the No. 21 car, easily qualified in the debut of JTG/Daugherty Racing. Ambrose will start 24th in his No. 47 car.

"This is fairly spectacular considering the trouble we had [Friday]," Ambrose said. "We did a whole two laps [Friday] and didn't know what to do with the car. We're a start-up team, and we made it in [Saturday]. This feels like my first genuine Cup start. I feel like we have climbed Mount Everest after [Friday's] effort. We had less than seven minutes on the racetrack, and here we are, we qualified."

Meanwhile, the Wood Brothers packed up, another missed race putting them ever further behind in owner points. Eddie Wood could only shake his head. "Just another chapter in the book, man," he said.